Posted on 09/22/2010 11:37:30 AM PDT by JoeProBono
ROSEMONT, Ill.- The first-ever North American Bed Bug Summit, which opened Tuesday near Chicago, attracted a sellout crowd to hear experts on the tiny biters, organizers said.
That appears to be one more sign that bed bugs, once almost routed in the United States by pesticides, are back in a big way, the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald reported.
"Ten years ago we got about one call about bed bugs a year, and now we get at least one call a day," Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the newspaper.
Organizers of the two-day event at the Hyatt hotel in Rosemont put together a panel of 14 entomologists and other bed bug experts, WGN-TV, Chicago, reported.
Curt Colwell, an entomologist with the state of Illinois, said until recently the only bed bugs he had seen were dead. He said one problem in dealing with their comeback is a lack of hard information, including what percentage of the bed bug population has become pesticide-resistant.
Was your house tented like they do for dry wood termites?
Seems about right. Thanks JBP.
That’s a good idea! Wonder why I didn’t think about that back them instead of killing my scalp with all those harsh insect repellent shampoos!
My daughter sat next to the girl who is the one that kept getting re-infested. I’m thinking school nurses should really stress the fact that you have to do the house cleaning as well.
Thanks for the info! I don’t think I have them!
Nope, they just closed all the doors and windows, and sealed them with duct tape. Then they ran small plastic tubing throughout the house, with an outlet in each room upstairs. The tubes were all routed to the gas cannister outside, and the amount of gas put into the house is carefully monitored. It doesn’t take a lot. The gas is heavier than air, so it sinks through the floors and permiates inside the walls. They also opened all the drawers and closets, set up some fans to mix the air and turned on all the ceiling fans in the house.
Within 12 house, every living thing in the house will be dead, including dust mites, mold, mildew, and anything else that happens to be there - not a bad thing at all. The next morning, they opened all doors and windows and vented the house thoroughly for about 6 hours, and went through the house with an electronic detector, looking for any possible “hot spots” that weren’t vented out. They also used an electric leaf blower to make sure none settled anywhere. We were free to move back in after 24 hours. Since we had a free place to stay, we made it 48 to be on the safe side... :)
Another company wanted the same amount of money to spend three days steam-treating only the upstairs in our house, and we would have had to remove *everything* outside and decontaminiate it ourselves, to remove any chances of eggs. Furniture, posters, pictures, light fixtures, etc. And after all of that, they could not guarantee it would work.
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