When Capitol Hill resident Angelo Carosio moved into a new apartment last summer and started waking up with bug bites on his body, he assumed mosquitoes or spiders had gotten into his and his roommate’s bedrooms. But when they kept getting bitten, the roommates did some research online and found that their tiny red welts were the textbook definition of bedbug bites. He says thinking about the experience still makes him feel itchy.
“We’re still not quite sure where they came from,” said Carosio, “we bought some used furniture. A couch from Goodwill was a possible culprit.”
Photo from Oldmaison
The King County Department of Health tells CHS that they do not track reports of bedbugs, so there are no numbers on how many cases have occurred in Seattle or which neighborhoods have the most cases of infestation.
“Bed bugs are getting to be everywhere,” said Dave Hickok, a health and environmental investigator with the DOH. “They effect everybody alike.”
Hickok said the idea that bedbugs strike most in dirty or impoverished areas is simply not true. Bedbugs can survive most anywhere, even inside electronics. Carosio’s roommate found several bedbugs in his laptop after exterminators fumigated their apartment. However, furniture is still the most common transporter for the pests. When visiting hotels and buying used furniture, consumers are encouraged to check for little brown dots and living bugs all around the furniture.
Twenty to 30 years ago, cases of bedbugs were rare, according to Hickok but the theories for why they have increased vary. Hickok said increased travel is a possible cause. Because bedbugs are a year round pest, there is no increased risk of infestation in the summer, but because more people take vacations in the summer, travelers should check where they are staying to ensure they do not transport bugs home. If you suspect you have bedbugs, Hickok recommends calling an exterminator as the bug bombs that can be purchased over the counter are not effective in killing them. You can also find non-toxic ways to eliminate them including vacuuming every single nook and cranny in your life. It’s a lot of work.
“It comes from traveling, relatives visiting [etc],” said Hickok. “Nobody just gets bedbugs.”
You can read more about bedbugs in this Stranger article from January. As for our poll, if you suffered bedbugs in both 2010 and before this year, we’re so sorry for you. Let us know when the most recent infestation occurred.
Other summer pests Capitol Hill residents might expect to see include carpenter ants, wasps and yellow jackets, said Al Brown, service manager at Cascade Pest Control. However, no one was able to explain the mysterious swarms of fruit flies that annually appear across the neighborhood. Generally, fruit flies are indoor pests attracted to homes with sanitation issues, which can be as simple as a potato rotting unnoticed under the kitchen sink. They can also be attracted to damp plant material outside.
In the home, gnats can be eliminated by placing a jar filled with apple cider vinegar in the affected room, but Capitol Hill residents will just have to keep swatting in front of their faces to get the flying bugs out of their way in Cal Anderson.
I live in a HUD contracted low income building near the Broadway Market and have been experiening a bed bug problem. The owners of the building don’t do nothing about it instead in this particular building they referred me to their management company which in turn did use a heat treatment that might have been effective ? But this friend of mine that I think was the original person to infest me and I told him he needed to tell his management had come to visit me and accidently reinfested me I think or the heat treatment never totally worked and now it just seems like my manager and his bosses want me to suffer. And I am really scared to say much of anything since I live in a low income building that they might kick me out.
Oh god, fucking tell them. They’ll definitely be angry with you if the whole building is swarming with them because you waited too long.
There’s no way to know if it was you, they crawl through the building anyway. It could have come from one of your neighbors, for all anyone knows.
As for as going any other place in the building I asked my manager about that and he said Oh we should be ok because I was next to the staircase and the elevator shaft and on the very top floor. And so far he says no one else as reported them except for me and this woman who my friend knew and also visited when he was supposed to be sprayed for bedbugs. So my manager said it was a good idea for that person not to come back here and I agreed. My manager did order some Diatomaceous earth and we have been trying to use that and Cedar Oil spray. By the way you can find out more about Diatomaceous Earth and it’s use against bedbugs from http://www.earthworkshealth.com/ and Cedar Oil spray from http://www.pestigator.com/
As far as I know, a simple “heat treatment” probably won’t get rid of them. It takes pros do do this properly–they are notoriously hard to kill entirely, as even 1 or 2 surviving can re-infest the entire place after treatment. When the exterminators came to my apartment we had to take all of our clothes out and wash them in hot water as well as put most of our belongings into trash bags to be fumigated for a few weeks. It’s a really intense process, but it worked for us.
The bill was over $1,000, luckily for us our apartment management company footed the bill for it. I can see why a low-income apartment might be a bit more hesitant to do so, but if they really want to avoid them spreading to other apartments (they can go through walls) you better tell them to call a professional bedbug exterminator ASAP.
(I’m the one quoted in this story)
Leedale: Alot of times management is in denial since treatment can be so costly-they wait until it hits critical mass. I suggest collecting bugs (dead is usually the only way to find them), putting them in a jar, and bringing them to your building manager to show that bed bugs are the actual problem. I’ve worked in shelters before and because folks panic about bed bugs, the people in charge think it’s just a rumor until they see evidence otherwise. Keep working on it, just document your sightings and any bites you may have. You can contact the local HUD office if no action is taken, and express concerns about tenancy retaliation then. Good luck!
My building management company initaly for the heat treatment used Sprague Pest Control and they did what they call Thermal remediation.
Glasses,
I have been collecting bedbugs in a little jar and told my manager and he still seems to not want to do anything about it because he says his bosses through the management company spent so much with Thermal remediation before that now that I got reinfested they just don’t want to do anything.
For the past two years we’ve had fruit flies. Can’t find the source, can’t seem to get rid of them.
Way better than bed bugs, but still annoying.
Nice way to get rid of fruit flies:
Fill a small bowl or cup with some kind of sweet vinegar (apple, balsamic, red wine, etc). Then tightly pull saran wrap across the top of the cup or bowl. Make some tiny holes; tiny enough for the fruit fly to get through but not big enough for them to clearly fly out of. Fruit flies can fly into these holes but they can’t fly out if they’re small enough. Eventually they’ll die in the bowl or you can just drown the dish in water.
I was under the impression that bed bugs are more common now than they were 30 years ago because we banned DDT and other pest control chemicals. I was told that DDT took about 25-30 years to really break down enough in our environment to no longer be effective.
“I was under the impression that bed bugs are more common now than they were 30 years ago because we banned DDT and other pest control chemicals.”
I heard that too for years, but recently found out that it’s a myth. They’re resistant to DDT as well.