Find Quarterly Abercrombie Fitch Christmas @ Amazon.com
|
My counsel piece on getting rid of bedbugs appears in today’s UK press. It was totally unlikely to fit everything in and I’m expecting a lively reader response. The bottom line is don’t faff in regards to with home sprays, toxic, organic, home-made or otherwise, but call in the experts without delay before the bugs breed and disseminate through your home and even into the fabric of your building and into other homes. Because bedbugs don’t harbour or disseminate disease, they have been an under-researched species. But the mini-plagues now happening all over the US are putting them right at the top of the environmental health agenda. A whole sheaf of bedbug articles are presently appearing in the New York Times. One reports that a community health survey in 2009 showed that 1 in 15 New Yorkers had bedbugs in their homes: “A number that is in all likelihood higher now… In recent weeks, bedbugs snuggled into the seats at AMC’s movie theater in Times Square, crept around a Victoria’s Secret store on Lexington Avenue and the offices of Elle Magazine and hitchhiked into the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.” Earlier this summer, subdivisions of New York’s Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister were hit and had to be temporarily closed. Bedbug sniffer dogs are in demand, exceptionally in hotels who have a nightmare needle-in-haystack problem with each infestation. Bedbugs have been around for ever of course – the firstborn recorded bedbug incident in the UK appeared in 1583. So why this resurgence now? What’s going on? Is the extreme idea held by some, that terrorism by explosion has been substituted by terrorism by stealth, so far-fetched? Well, yes. Hopefully. It’s more down to the successful lobbying of people with viewpoints like mine who are enthusiasti regarding getting the toxic chemicals out of our bodies, our homes and the wider environment. The widespread use of DDT to clear up bomb web sites after World War II nearly annihilated bedbugs from Europe. But now the banning of widespread use of the most dangerous chemicals, along with the increase of alien travel, has brought the bugs back into our homes. Bedbug infestation is now on the rise in the UK. We’ve had them in our flat in central London. As anybody who has been through it will agree, it was hell! It came as no surprise to learn that bedbugs were one of the galore instruments of torture employed in Stalin’s Gulags (think being placed in a wooden box where hundreds would attack at once, falling off the sides and dropping from the lid). Here in 21st century London, they slide without a sound into your bed at night on their castor-like toes to feed on your blood, stinging you awake. You can’t even move into another room to get back to sleep for fear of disseminating them. Like cockroaches, they have a tough, almost shell-like, exterior and are so adept at hiding and survival you at times in truth feel like you’re battling with a horrible, evil intelligence. Their peak feeding time, for example, is just before dawn when persons are in their deepest sleep. Thankfully our battle is now over but it wasn’t straightforward. The insect poison from the hardware store was useless even even though it brought up bedbugs on the packet. We called in the local council pest controllers who told us the store spray we’d been using was only effective for a couple of hours. But then their spraying of toxic chemical didn’t work either so we had to call them back. They kicked us out for 3 hours and sprayed a fine, venomous mist allround the flat. Still there were survivors, dealt with by powdering the nest internet sites with Diatomaceous Earth (use with caution, don’t inhale, follow safety instructions). We were, I suppose, lucky in that the nesting websites in the wooden bed frame were visible. Some infestations are in the building itself, disseminating from apartment to apartment, sliding up through gaps in the skirting boards. If we hadn’t annihilated them, the council would have had powers to enter our neighbours’ properties, confirming, the New York Times’ suggestion that the social cost is rising as well. I didn’t hesitate in permitting the chemicals to be sprayed in my home, even though I did ask what they were. They came from a company called Killgerm, and are so powerful they’re only furnishes to registered users. Fortunately, the recent US Environmental Health diary report on the links amidst cancer and sure types of cleaning product recorded that the use of mothballs, pesticides and insect repellents in the home had little impact. So, whilst I am all for economical, non-toxic ways of cleaning and stain removal, this is a classic case of what I’ve always believed in – use non-toxic on a day-to-day basis but when needs be REACH FOR THE CHEMICALS! And, in the case of bedbugs, call in the experts with their powerful poisons right away.
|
