http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05sun3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 EDITORIAL

In Search of a Bedbug Solution

Published: September 4, 2010

As bedbugs proliferate once again in New York City and other major urban areas, it is tempting to pray for a technological miracle to zap the pests into extinction. Alas, there is none. Frustrated New Yorkers and other victims will have to rely on an array of techniques that can often be costly, cumbersome, time-consuming — and only partially effective.

Related

• Times Topic: Bedbugs

After virtually disappearing from this country for decades, bedbugs may have been brought back by travelers from abroad. The bugs are showing up in all sorts of places — not just where people sleep, like hotels and residential units, but also in the occasional movie house or clothing store. A survey last year by the New York City health department found that 6.7 percent of adult New Yorkers — some 400,000 people — reported a problem with bedbugs that required an exterminator in the previous 12 months.

There are few sure-fire ways to turn the tide. Even the original magic bullet, DDT, would misfire if brought back today because bedbugs long ago became resistant to it on a large scale. Critics who blame environmentalists for disarming us against bedbugs might better blame the inevitable development of resistance, hastened by overuse of chemicals.

Some pest controllers are placing their hopes on resuscitating Propoxur, a highly toxic chemical that was phased out of indoor uses because it could cause nervous-system damage in children. 

Ohio and Kentucky have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to allow professional exterminators to use it indoors, and other states may follow suit. The requests are based in part on laboratory tests by a Kentucky entomologist on small groups of bedbugs. Some of today’s leading pesticides could not kill even half of the bugs, while propoxur wiped them all out in two hours. The E.P.A. is studying whether there might be limited situations — a nursing home with no children present — where it could be used.

Propoxur to Fight Bed Bugs?

Posted by radicalisrelative

http://radicalisrelative.wordpress.com/tag/propoxur/

I recently read that 25 states are petitioning the EPA to allow use of Propoxur against the bed bug epidemic.

According to the EPA who last had the funds available to release information about Propoxur in 2000, one study showed a chronic feeding study of Propoxur in rats, tumors of the bladder and the uterus were observed at high doses. According the EPA’s 2000 data, no studies have been done to see if it causes birth defects or cancer in humans.  So if you or your landlord were to sprinkle Propoxur all over your bed for bed bugs, not only would you be inviting you and your family to be guinea pigs in some case control study 15 years down the road, but the bed bugs would be back. Why? Because like other pests, they reproduce at a far higher rate than we do and within a few generations of natural selection (in a month) the population in your apartment is far more resistant. Meanwhile, you and your children are not. But as long as you don’t immediately die, then it’s safe right?

When asked about treating bed bugs, “an agency spokesman, Dale Kemery, said the EPA has pledged to find new, potent chemicals to kill bedbugs, which can cause itchy, red bites that can become infected if scratched.”

Give me a break. Yes, bed bugs are a nuisance. And they are hard to kill with chemicals. But they are EASY TO KILL WITH HEAT! Bed bugs and their eggs permanently die at temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. And natural selection has nothing on 100% extermination, guaranteed.

So – if I were head of the EPA, I would send that spokesperson to a basic Bed Bug workshop where he’d learn that many reputable pest control companies offer a heat treatment. They bring in a big machine and jack up the temperature of your apartment to 130 degrees. All the bed bugs and eggs die and never come back unless a fresh bed bug comes in from the outside world (or your apartment neighbor if your landlord didn’t exterminate all infested units in the building.) It can be expensive, but it’s far cheaper than trying with the chemical treatment several times unsuccessfully and then having to get the heat treatment anyway. Not to mention less of a headache.

Propoxur to fight bedbugs? They have been doing it for years. I have a CO2 bedbug trap to catch bedbugs without any insecticide. I have a bedbug shield to stop all bites and eliminate bedbugs until there are none left. There is no need for Propoxur to which bedbugs will also become resistant like it did with DDT and now Permethrin.

Have a second look at this site, you might find a few interesting things about bedbugs and poison.

JulesNoise

Here is Propoxur

PHC 2-(1-Methylethoxy)phenyl methylcarbamate Phenol, 2-(1-methylethoxy)-Methylcarbamate 2-Isopropoxyphenyl methylcarbamate
Formula	C11H15NO3
Structure
Description	White to tan crystalline powder with a faint, characteristic odor.
Uses	Insecticide, molluscicide.

Transport.
UN number	2757
Response guide	151
Hazard class	6.1
Packing Group	I; II; III
USCG CHRIS Code	PXR

Propoxur kills bedbugs the way permethrin did after the DDT era before exterminators made bedbugs became resistant to it by over use and over exposure.

Bedbugs became resistant to DDT and now to Permethrin, now that exterminator use Propoxur, the bedbugs will become resistant to that poison too. It will not kill bedbugs but it will kill humans and  better than current pesticides, but nobody expects it could be a catastrophic  all-purpose solution the way DDT once was. Exterminator claim “targeting” and already use it in the beds of our children.

Pesticides spread bedbugs and need to be banned, replaced with non-chemical options, like heat or steam treatments, vacuuming, tossing infested sheets or clothes into a hot washer or dryer, encasing mattresses to entomb the bugs, and sealing crevices but the best way to eliminate bedbugs is with homemade CO2 traps.

Bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases, and their bite is almost never felt. But the bite triggers an allergic reaction — mostly itchy bumps or welts and, in rare cases, fatal shock. The primary damage, besides the potentially high cost of extermination, is emotional and psychological. Government and industry need to expedite the search for better solutions. The public’s tolerance for bedbugs is near zero.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on September 5, 2010, on page WK7 of the New York edition.

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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/genetics/how-bedbugs-became-resistant-to-todays-insecticides-6519386

Virginia Tech Department of Entomology

Until about a decade ago, most people in the United States only knew about bedbugs through the seemingly dated phrase “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” But the bloodsucking parasites, which were largely eradicated by the mid-20th century, have roared back in all 50 states, and the bugs’ evolving resistance to insecticides is part of the reason for their resurgence. A new study gives the most complete picture so far of the adaptations some bedbugs have developed to thwart exterminators’ poisons.The pesky bugs, it appears, can pump out a stew of enzymes that destroy insecticides, according to the study out this week in the journal PLoS ONE. This newly described neutralizing mechanism is in addition to a mutation, which scientists revealed a few years ago, that alters the structure of bedbugs’ nerve endings and prevents common insecticides from binding to their nerves. Together, these defenses could form a one-two punch that protects bedbugs from exterminators’ chemicals.”The enzymes we discovered in the context of this paper are essentially the initial line of defense in breaking insecticide down before it reaches the nerve,” Zach Adelman, lead author of the paper and an associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech, says.To figure out bedbugs’ defenses, Adelman and colleagues started by gathering a sample of bedbugs from Richmond, Va. The Richmond bugs had demonstrated strong resistance to a class of insecticides known as pyrethroids—the agents of choice for exterminators. Pyrethroids paralyze bedbugs by keeping open the sodium channels where nerves meet and communicate with one another. “The nerve will keep firing, and it can’t relax,” Adelman explains. The result: paralysis and eventual death.The researchers also used some bedbugs that had been reared in a lab in Fort Dix, N.J., for decades, and had not been exposed to chemicals. When Adelman’s team blasted both sets of bedbugs with two different pyrethroid insecticides—one called beta-cyfluthrin and another deltamethrin—they found that the Richmond bugs could withstand 111 times the dose of the beta-cyfluthrin insecticide compared with the Fort Dix bugs, and a whopping 5200 times the dose of deltamethrin.Clearly, the hearty Richmond bugs had adapted some strong defenses. Adelman and company found that the bugs possessed one of the two mutations in genes coding for their sodium channels that researchers had previously seen in populations of New York bedbugs that were also resistant to this class of insecticide. The mutation is analogous to camouflage—it’s as if the insecticides can’t recognize the nerve endings they typically target. Adelson’s group also saw that the Richmond bugs were producing far higher levels of suspected insecticide-busting proteins in the cytochrome P450 monooxygenase and carboxylesterase families.With these identifications, Subba Reddy Palli, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, thinks the study will help in bringing bedbugs to heel. “This paper is good progress toward understanding insecticidal resistance,” he says.

Now that his team has identified the genetic sequences bedbugs use to make these detoxifying compounds, Adelman says scientists can check populations worldwide to see how far this defensive capability extends. That will be important for establishing surveillance of growing resistance, as well as for creating new strategies for controlling the critters. For example, he says, if it seems that only the Richmond bedbugs have the genetic mutations needed to crank out this particularly powerful cocktail of enzymes, exterminators should engage in an all-out assault to try to wipe out that bedbug population before it spreads.

The arms race against bedbugs and other insects mirrors the battle with bacterial “superbugs” that have developed antibiotic resistance, such as those that cause staph and tuberculosis. Indeed, bedbugs have a long history of developing defenses against our chemical warfare agents. Bedbug “superbugs” first emerged in the 1950s. DDT (which was banned in 1972 because of human health concerns) wiped out most native bedbug populations in the U.S. by 1950. But some bedbugs survived, developing resistance to it, and later, organophosphate insecticides such as malathion.

Now pyrethroids are losing their effectiveness. “We have all these bedbugs we’ve chased from one chemistry to another,” Dini Miller, a co-author of the study, an urban-pest management specialist for the state of Virginia, and a professor at Virginia Tech, says.

Yet the identification of bedbugs’ enzymatic countermeasures could ultimately provide exterminators with fresh ammunition. Besides insecticides, exterminators use a range of methods, including cold air, steam, and vacuums. But these repeated treatments can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Rejiggering conventional insecticides might still do enough damage to keep bedbugs at bay. “We can look at formulating things in new ways and get better penetration into these bedbugs,” Miller says.

Down the road, scientists can base next-generation insecticides on chemicals substantially unlike those that bedbugs have already mastered disarming. Adelman says: “We can come back to the bugs and say, ‘We have a chemical you can no longer deal with given your arsenal. Now try this on for size.’”

New offensive weapons can’t come too soon, as the spread of these brownish or reddish bloodsucking insects has residents of heavy-hit urban areas such as New York City on edge. “Bedbugs don’t kill you,” Adelman says, “but they can drive you crazy.”

• How Bedbugs Are Becoming Resistant to Today’s Insecticides
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• Osama bin Laden’s DNA : How Sure Is 99.9 Percent Sure?
• Know Your Pest: The Menacing Asian Tiger Mosquito

Read more: How Bedbugs Became Resistant to Today’s Insecticides – Killing Bedbugs – Popular Mechanics

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the “Cash Cow” that has resulted from a Perfect Storm.

THE BEDBUG AS A MONEY-MAKING MARKET

First re-appeared the bed bug (absent due to DDT for 50 years) eradicated with DDT and absent from North America for 50 years.  Fear grows as the poison–resistant bed bugs spread. The fear is an opportunity that can’t be ignored. It smells like profit. Next, heap on an extra dose of fear to make the bedbug appear invincible to insure a firm grasp by the market to separate you from your wallet.

Next, for credibility, enlist all the entomological studies possible to back the latest, greatest  “extremely expensive” gadgets and products, which are cheaply made, to purchase in the fight of a bed bug infestation. These gadgets and products will tell you bed bugs are present, and they may slow the bugs’ progression; but these gadgets and products do not eliminate bed bugs. Eliminating bed bugs would dry up profit. When everything else fails, now enters the pest control companies with all their pesticides to which, unfortunately, most bed bugs have and are quickly developing a resistance.  Your fear overrides logic of the dangers associated with exposure to pesticides to you, your children, and pets. The companies will spray, dust, spray more, tell you to pack up all your clothing in plastic, and oh yes, come back and spray some more.  But wait, let’s bring in the dogs. To the tune of a hefty sum, the dogs will tell you whether or not you have bed bugs (at least most of the time). Many times, the dogs will be brought back to recheck. The dogs don’t eliminate the bugs, they only confirm an infestation. Now, if you happen to have money, you can bring on the heat. High heat will kill all stages of bed bugs; however, do you honestly believe a bed bug or two or three can’t find a crack, crevice, or inside wall that is below the target temperature. It takes only one female bed bug survivor to create a brand new infestation. So, let’s go the whole distance and have your house tented and fumigated. This will give you a 100 percent kill (if skillfully performed), but to the tune of up to and over $5,000.00. Will this prevent the bed bugs’ return? No. The final alternative is to get rid of everything you own and move. Is there a guarantee that you won’t move with a few stray bed bugs into a new home that may already be infested or become infested in the next weeks, months, or years? What are you left with? Short answer: frustration, despair, panic, hopelessness, helplessness, exhaustion, social withdrawal, lost money, anger, and worst of all, BITES !!!

All of this is unnecessary. The “Cash Cow” (the profit generating industry) and the disgusting bed bug continue to grow. The goal of this blog is to bring down the Cash Cow System, eliminate bed bugs permanently, and allow you to get your life back. You will then be free to view the bed bug as simply a small nuisance.

The truth is the bed bug IS nothing but a small nuisance.  A bed bug bite transfers no disease.  The bite’s physical reaction is no worse than a mosquito bite.  The bed bug bite injects fear.  The fear will disappear as you gain knowledge, understanding, and control of your situation.

Nearly everything you need is probably already in your possession. Will you be required to do a little work? Yes, the bedbug cannot simply be wished away.  Learning and being able to protect your bed and make your own trap will rid  the bed bug forever.  Is it safe?  Yes.  It is dangerousonly for bed bugs only, the trap does not use any poison. It can be used in homes with babies, pets, those that are ill, the elderly, and pregnant women.  The trap is 100 percent safe.

• Do you have to pack everything up and live out of plastic? No.
• Do you have to de-clutter your home? No.
• Do you need to throw anything away? No.
• Will it take a long time to rid your home of bed bugs? No.
• Will your friends and family know you’re fighting bed bugs? No.
• Do you have to take your landlord to court or beg for government assistance in your quest? No.
• Do you have to worry whether or not your neighbors have bed bugs? No.
• Will you be able to detect and kill any new infestations quickly and easily? Yes.
• Will you be able to sleep in your bed the very first night and awaken with no bites? Yes.
• Can you have friends and family come into your home? Yes.

In all fairness, it must be stated that there are people amongst them that honestly do want to help you. The problem is that they do not know how to eliminate bed bugs. They have been trained to believe that pesticides are the best way to get rid of the bed bug. Academia and the large chemical companies are more interested in agricultural pest management (profit again) than residential pest management. Many in the pest management business are not pursuing answers because they have relied on the information handed down from academia and the chemical companies. Critical thinking, together with common sense has not being utilized. Corporate profit interests do not mix well with citizen’s needs.

One of the most difficult things to accept is that something so frightening can actually have a simple and inexpensive solution. It goes against our human nature to believe this.  In truth, the answers for many of life’s apparent overwhelming problems are actually simple in nature. We are the ones that are inexplicably driven to complicate the obvious.

Is this information free? Yes!  Of course, there are materials to buy to protect your bed and make your own traps.  Much of what you need is already in your home.  The remaining items are all very inexpensive and available.

All the bedbugs in your life will be gone forever.  As you sleep peacefully and thankfully free of bed bugs, remind yourself that there are so many others around the world suffering and being preyed upon.

SHARE THE INFORMATION YOU’VE LEARNED.

A page will be devoted to testimonials, and it will be very helpful to hear your stories to encourage others.

Bedbug resistance to poison

DDT Ban

The cancellation decision culminated three years of intensive governmental inquiries into the uses of DDT. As a result of this examination convinced the Environmental Protection Agency that the continued massive use of DDT posed unacceptable risks to the environment and potential harm to human health.
The ban was attributed to a number of factors including increased insect resistance, development of more effective alternative pesticides, growing public and user concern over adverse environmental side effects–and governmental restriction on DDT use since 1969.

http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/ddt/01.html

DDT

In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carsonwas published. The book catalogued the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effects on ecology or human health. The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Its publication was one of the signature events in the birth of the environmental movement, and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led to DDT being banned in the US in 1972. DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under theStockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vectorcontrol continues to this day and remains controversial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT

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Pyrethroid

Bedbugs have been a problem for humans for thousands of years. Up until the 1950s, they were almost completely wiped out due to the use of DDT. After the use of DDT for this purpose was banned, pyrethroids became more commonly used against bed bugs. As of 2010 nearly all populations of bedbugs have evolved nerve cells impervious to pyrethroids, and pyrethroids are no longer effective in combatting bedbug infestations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrethroid

How Bed Bugs Outsmart Poisons Designed to Control Them

Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Newswise — Bed bugs, once nearly eradicated in the built environment, have made a big comeback recently, especially in urban centers such as New York City. In the first study to explain the failure to control certain bed bug populations, toxicologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Korea’s Seoul National University show that some of these nocturnal blood suckers have developed resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, in particular deltamethrin, that attack their nervous systems.
The study by senior researcher John Clark and colleagues in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology reveals that these pests have evolved to outsmart the latest generation of chemicals used to control them since DDT was banned. In providing this first look at a mechanism, the researchers summarize that diagnostic tools to detect the relevant mutation in bed bug populations have been “urgently needed for effective control and resistance management.”
Specifically, Clark and colleagues found that bed bugs in New York City have acquired mutations in their nerve cells, which blunt the neurotoxic effect of the pyrethroid toxins used against them. The mutations affect sodium channels (resembling pores) in the neurons’ outer membrane, where electrical nerve impulses are produced. In the past, these nervous system poisons could effectively paralyze and kill the bugs, but this is no longer always the case.
Resistance means mutations are acquired over time by selection with pyrethroids, so the neuronal pores no longer respond to their toxic effects. Clark and colleagues found that these pores in New York City bed bugs are now as much as 264 times more resistant to deltamethrin. This means that even if treated, New York City bed bugs go on to suck blood from unsuspecting sleepers for many more nights.
The researchers are not sure how widely this resistance has spread, that is, whether the bugs that infest hotels, apartment buildings and homes in places other than New York City have developed the same type of immunity to chemical control. But as Clark states, “This type of pyrethroid resistance is common in many pest insects and the failure of the pyrethroids to control bed bug populations across the United States and elsewhere indicates that resistance is already widespread.”
For this study, the researchers collected hard-to-control bed bugs from New York City, plus easy-to-control bed bugs from an untreated colony in Florida, Clark explains. The New York population was determined to be highly resistant (264 times more resistant) to deltamethrin compared to the Florida population by contact exposure. Further, they found that resistance was not due to the increased breakdown of deltamethrin (enzymatic metabolism) by the resistant bed bugs but appeared to be due to an insensitive nervous system.
Using molecular techniques, they sequenced genes related to the sodium ion channel’s operation in both groups and identified two mutations found only in the resistant population. Similar mutations have been found in other pyrethroid-resistant insects and are likely the cause of the resistance in bed bugs, Clark and colleagues note. This helps to narrow the focus of the next set of experiments designed to reveal more about the acquired resistance.
There are several kinds of bed bugs but the one best adapted to the human environment is known in Latin as Cimex (“a bug” ) lectularius (“lying down at home” ), which shows how long they’ve been with us. Bed bugs arrived here with the earliest European visitors. These nocturnal pests feed about once every five to 10 days but are not thought to spread disease (*). They use two tubes, one to inject an anticoagulant and mild anesthetic, the other to suck blood.

(*) Not true for HIV. The bedbug is an AIDS vector.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/how-bed-bugs-outsmart-poisons-designed-to-control-them

Poison spreads bedbugs and bedbugs can transmit HIV.

Entomologist are morons

whose only advice is

the use of a repellent to fight blood sucking bedbugs