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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (251266)	6/1/2010 10:54:11 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Cash for Bedbugs Earlier this month Linda B. Rosenthal, a New York State Assembly member for the Upper East Side and Hell’s Kitchen districts, renewed her demand for legislation that would force building owners to disclose a five-year history of bedbug infestations to renters. She also proposed the city offer a tax credit of up to $750 per person to those whose homes have been affected by bedbugs. “The whole city is afflicted,” says Rosenthal says. “The cost of dealing with bed bugs is exorbitant and while $750 won’t cover it, it will help. It would be much better if the health department put out clear advice on how to rid an entire building of bedbugs, rather than leaving to it individual landlords.” The problem is about to become international (it is already, but under-publicised). Experts agree that the prime method of bedbug transmission is travel: you go somewhere —like May to a hotel — sleep on an infested bed and pass the bugs on. Bedbugs also nestle in clothing and suitcases. Experts are split on whether they “jump” from person to person on public transport. But they can live on train and cinema seats, on furniture, and take over buildings by burrowing in crevices, nooks and crannies. New York and other metropolitan centres are bedbug paradises: high populations, high numbers of apartments, people always on the move. Bedbug infestations in London and the Midlands have increased threefold in the past decade. The National Pest Management Association will soon publish a report revealing bedbug infestation figures across the US — and also some choice international findings: 90 per cent of pest-control companies it surveyed in Europe had dealt with bedbug infestations, a spokeswoman reveals. When it comes to their vampiric feeding, Tim McCoy —who like Jeremy Ecker, lets them sup his blood for research —notes that sometimes you can feel them, sometimes not. But, he says, they scent people emitting CO2 and heat and scuttle from up to 15ft feet away for their grub. The most horrible and noticeable thing about a fully grown, fully fed bedbug is that it is bright red, after drinking the blood of its human host. Some, such as McCoy, do not react to the bites; many others, such as May and her husband, do. “The bedbugs seemed to congregate near the bed, the couch, the netted seating on the office chairs,” she says. “You imagined them crawling on you. I saw one on my husband’s back. We tried to exterminate them ourselves and realised we couldn’t.” Forget the many products on the market or exterminators making claims of being able to turf them out of your house easily and cheaply. The only effective treatment, McCoy says, is a series of expensive, extreme-heat treatments — at around 49C (120F) — administered by expert exterminators. Despite calls for extreme pesticides such as DDT and Propoxur to be relegalised, McCoy thinks both may prove ineffectual. “Use the wrong chemicals in the wrong way and you could damage yourself and your home.” timesonline.co.uk