QUESTION:
What might you suggest for a Bed Bug prevention plan?
ANSWER:
Maybe we can look at this question in a couple of ways. First would be how can your customers (hotels, homes) prevent the occurrence of bed bugs in their living places, and second how can the pest control technician prevent bringing bed bugs home himself. Neither one is a slam dunk, and the hotel/motel industry would seem to have the tougher job. We can accept that bed bugs are hitchhikers and anyone who stays at a hotel could, potentially, be carrying the bugs in their luggage. The hotel management has no way at this time to screen that luggage before it gets to the room, so in theory there is no possible way for the hotel to “prevent” the importation of bed bugs. Interesting thought though, isn’t it? Perhaps in the near future new tools will come along that allow you quickly to scan items like suitcases and backpacks to detect any presence of bed bugs or their eggs. Having a bug-snifffing dog on staff would be prohibitive for hotels, but a small portable device that detects them in some manner would be interesting, and most guests of hotels should accept that it also protects THEM from getting someone else’s bugs.
Hotels should have a plan in place specifically for bed bugs, and it involves good training of the housekeeping staff to perform a basic inspection after each guest leaves and the bedding is changed, looking for the obvious signs of the bugs. They should plan on routine inspections by a qualified, trained pest control technician and have a contingency plan in place for when bed bugs are discovered in a room. This might include immediately quarantining not only that room but all adjacent rooms until all are positively known to be free and clear of bugs. The liability to the hotel is too great not to have this in place. They also can place the various kinds of bed bugs traps in each room – glue traps, pitfall traps, active monitors where suspicion is highest. I noticed that in a hotel I stayed in recently the head board has been removed from the wall, eliminating one likely and difficult-to-treat bug harborage area. Hotel housekeeping staff also should be instructed NOT to wear home the clothing they wore while managing the rooms, but to change out of that clothing and into clean clothing, and to place all clothing worn in the rooms into sealed plastic bags for laundering.
These same steps might be appropriate for the PMP who treats bedbug infestations. First you can wear light colored coveralls over your work clothing to facilitate seeing any bugs on the outside, and the coveralls then can be removed and either disposed of or laundered before wearing them again. They should be placed within a sealed plastic bag and then immediately transferred to a hot wash and hot dryer. This is a good rule for any other clothing you might wear in a bed bug infested home – do not go back into your own home while wearing this clothing, but remove it, seal it, wash and dry it, and perhaps even hit the showers yourself before settling into your private life for the evening. If any bugs have managed to fall into or crawl onto your clothing, and even worse if they deposited some eggs on the clothing, your need is to kill them before they have the ability to move from clothing into your home or into some other home that you work in following a bed bug job.
This is the one problem with bed bugs. The only way they can be in a room is to have been brought in by someone else, and the search then will be on for who that culprit is. You notice that people with bed bug problems are labeled (by lawyers) as “victims”, and of course victims are always encouraged to sue whoever it was that victimized them. Even in your own home it would be prudent to take the basic steps – install mattress and boxspring encasements, install pitfall traps under bed framing, place glue traps along walls, and do the basic inspection of bedding and nearby furniture for blood spots and shed exoskeletons.
On PestWeb you will find a great many articles and resources in our “Bed Bug Info” section, and here there will be forms you might use for your own company plan as well as material that would be beneficial to provide to your customers.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
Pest QuestionsSeptember 15, 2011
