Heat Treating Bed Bugs: A Process Not to be Taken Lightly

The heat is on! But it better be on carefully.

Exterminating bed bugs with heat is a bit of a newer trend for this industry, one which we offer at M&M Pest Control/M&M Environmental. But don't let this get you all hot and bothered. Heat treatments must be performed extremely carefully, with specifications that must are required to fall strictly in line with building codes and city rules. The thermal heat treatment process must be performed by teams of specially trained individuals, where there are absolutely no amateurs allowed.

According to an article in today's Chicago Reader, one couple in Albany, NY unfortunately had to learn this lesson the hard way.  

In late April, Rodriguez had started waking up with itchy welts on the right side of her body. After identifying bedbugs as the cause, she called a pest control company out to her place for a quote. They told her it would cost around $1,200 and they'd need permission from her landlord, Greg Puchalski, to do the treatment. But Rodriguez claims that Puchalski refused—even though she said she'd pay for it. "He goes, 'No, Taina, I fix it, I fix it,'" she says. "'I'll do it my way.'" (Puchalski denies that the conversation took place.) 

Rodriguez and her husband fortunately were at the beach when the explosion took place in their home. Though Puchalski denies it, a variety of witnesses claimed that they had seen him using propane tanks to try and exterminate the bed bugs out of their apartment, basing this procedure on something he had apparently seen on TV. The drama gets worse.

Rodriguez says the fire destroyed 95 percent of their possessions, including her wheelchair and medications (she and her husband are both disabled: she has Marfan syndrome; he suffered a work-related injury that left his lower back fused). The Red Cross helped them replace their medications, and they were able to stay with Velarde's brother, who lived across the street, while they looked for a new place.

These actions had some serious and immediate consequences for Rodriguez and her husband. So unfortunate that they have to be the ones leading this example, but perhaps their story will help shed light on the utter importance of just how carefully heat treatments must be performed.

After examining the Rodriguez' story, the article shares snippets of bed bug history, including archaic descriptions of ye olde bed bug treatment methods, and brings us back to present day by taking a look at the NPMA's 2011 Bugs Without Borders Survey, which revealed that bed bug cases for the 1,000 pest control companies surveyed had jumped up a collective 11%. However, the outlook is grim for getting rid of them for good. Since they haven't been linked to causing disease, funding is tight. Also, the creation of a new chemical that would be able to guarantee success in bed bug combat could take up to ten years. Yikes.

So what is to be done?

Catering to a Chicago-based readership, the article discusses the high ranking Chicago received in private companies' Orkin and Terminix's separate (and potentially influenced) polls that ranking US-cities on a bed bugged-scale. Apparently, unlike New York, Chicago does not have specific laws in place between tenants and landlords who are dealing with bed bugs - something that will hopefully soon change. Perhaps New York can lead the example for these laws, helping other big cities follow to protect their residents of having to deal with unsightly extermination situations.

A number of additional anecdotes follow in the article, but none quite as impactful as that first story. If a thermal heat treatment is the direction that you are leaning towards for your bed bug treatment, we cannot stress enough at M&M Pest Control the importance of asking the right questions to make sure that you will be in the best and safest hands possible.