Huntsville Housing Authority still monitoring bed bugs at Johnson Towers senior apartments

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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Huntsville Housing Authority officials say an initial pesticide treatment appears to have contained a bed bug outbreak at the Johnson Towers senior apartment building.

"We have been monitoring it and have noticed an improvement" in the 20 affected units, Housing Authority spokeswoman Wendy Reeves said Tuesday.

Those apartments will be sprayed again this week with Zenprox and a second chemical designed to make any remaining bed bugs sterile, Reeves said.

In the coming weeks, the entire eight-story building on Seminole Drive west of downtown will be treated. Reeves said Housing Authority officials are considering using heat treatments designed to kill bed bugs and their larvae.

A Canadian company, Heat Assault, says it has designed a system capable of eliminating bed bugs from apartment buildings as large as 20 stories. Special heaters placed in each apartment rapidly raise the temperature to between 120 and 140 degrees, killing most insects within half an hour.

"We're trying to gauge the effectiveness of that with other places that have used it," Reeves said.

Two residents on different floors of Johnson Towers reported seeing bed bugs in late January. A follow-up inspection uncovered the tiny pests in 20 of the 120 units.

While not known to transmit disease, bed bugs feed on the blood of humans. Their bites can cause an allergic reaction that sometimes leads to more serious skin infections such as impetigo, ecthyma and lymphanigitis.

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Huntsville Housing Authority still monitoring bed bugs at Johnson Towers senior apartments

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