More on NY Subway Bed Bugs
by Judd WileyMay 10th, 2008, 10:16 am
New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is in full damage-control mode.
The HPD employee who spoke of bedbugs in subway stations at a recent HPD seminar was reflecting on his own personal experience, not his work at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. HPD is responsible for enforcing the housing maintenance code and our inspectors only issue violations for bedbugs found in residences. The agency does not regulate subway stations.
Thanks guys, for sharing your expertise in bed bug prevention, and for not hiding behind your bureaucratic stovepipe.
NYTimes’ City Room interviewed Michael Potter, an urban entomologist from the University of Kentucky and world authority on bed bugs. He confirmed that, yes, the little blood-suckers can live on subways.
“If you go way back 100 years ago, bedbugs were very common on trains, on buses, in taxicabs, in all modes of transport,” said Dr. Potter, who had just come from New York City where he was speaking to pest control specialists.
He added that bedbugs can get into the cracks and crevices on the benches and in the trains.
Bedbugs were a huge problem during the turn of the century, through the 1940s. Starting around World War II, they were curbed with DDT, the miracle insecticide turned environmental threat and perhaps perceived as a savior again. In the last five to seven years, bedbugs have experienced a resurgence in New York and elsewhere.
Dr. Potter said: “In other areas of the world where bedbugs are also a big problem, like India, there have been reports of massive problems of bedbugs on trains and on benches. I’ve heard from some pest control companies that work in India, that you have to be careful on which benches you sit in. There have been reports of bedbugs in trains in Europe.”
In other words, we’re (A) moving backwards in time and (B) becoming like India and other third world hellholes. Wonderful.
Here’s what we can expect, according to Dr. Potter.
The bedbugs hitchhike on people, in part because humans are a source of food. “They have to feed on blood,” Dr. Potter said, “so they are waiting for another blood meal to come along. If bedbugs are sitting on a park bench, or a subway bench, they will just wait for their next meal.”
And they are very patient. “Bedbugs can persist a long time between meals,” Dr. Potter said. “They’ll just hunker down. Studies show that bedbugs can live many many months, a year, perhaps longer without feeding.”
SUBWAYblogger says what we’re all quietly thinking:
I’d imagine that the bed bugs will easily spread via homeless people sleeping on he benches. They move around from place to place and spread the bugs.
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