Category Archives: Bed Bugs New York

K-9 bed bug detection available near OIA

Bed bugs, just the thought of them can send shivers through your body.

Bug experts say Cinncinati, Chicago, and New York are battling infestations of bed bugs. Here in Orlando, with so many tourists coming and going we could be next.

One local businessman has taken to the front lines in the battle to keep Orlando infestation free.

Doyle Blake runs Sleep Tight K-9 located at the Park, Bark and Fly airport parking on Semoran Boulevard. The business operates out of a trailer just minutes from Orlando International Airport.

Blake says a stay in a hotel room is the number one way bed bugs can enter your home. He offers to check your bags moments after you land.

To help find the bugs, Blake employs his trusty beagle Daisy. She's specially trained and certified to sniff out the creatures. Blake and Daisy team up to search hundreds of pieces of luggage a week.

Experts at the University of Florida agree the science is sound. Dr. Robert Pereira, one of the worlds top bug researchers, works in the Department of Entomology. His team has done extensive study on whether K-9's can actually detect the bugs.

"If the dogs are well trained, and well maintained, the dogs can be very accurate," he says, "they will detect just one bed bug in a room."

Pereira says it's important that the handler understands exactly how the dog is functioning. "You have to train the dogs to do exactly what you want them to do." He says the dogs need constant re-training.

Read the original post:
Dogs trained to find bed bugs near OIA

By Lewis Braham - 2012-10-01T18:04:47Z

Mary DeRosier had a choice. This summer, during one of the worst heat waves in Chicagos history, the 60-year-old music teacher had to decide whether to go on vacation to someplace cooler or stay at home and buy antiques from home shopping website One Kings Lane. She chose the latter. I didnt want to go on a trip because I didnt want to get bed bugs and I didnt want to get yelled at by some flight attendant, she says. I decided Im going to spend my vacation money on shopping instead. And Im telling you I had plenty of fun.

DeRosier jokingly calls checking the site every day for deals my biggest problem and my biggest joy and part of my midlife crisis. Shes not alone. Some 15 million Americans suffer from shopping addiction, according to the American Psychological Association. Research suggests the Internet is a really fertile ground for the development and maintenance of compulsive buying disorder, says Dr. April Benson, a psychologist in New York and author of To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop. The ease, the 24-7-ness of it, the anonymity and the vast array of productsall of those factor into the disorder.

Flash sale sites such as One Kings Lane, Gilt, ideeli, Haute Look and Rue La La make the shopping experience all the more enticing. Part of their addictive quality lies in the flash aspect of sales that last often only 24 to 72 hours. Ive had clients whove found flash sale sites almost like crack cocaine, says Terrence Shulman, founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending & Hoarding in Franklin, Michigan. Many clients are overshopping at traditional sites, but what makes these flash sale ones unique is they offer high-end or rare items that go quickly. So they intensify the adrenaline, and the hunt and the feeling of euphoria when people are able to snap up a deal. Its almost like gambling, in a way.

Although neither Benson nor Shulman will disclose the names of clients, Benson says she has ones who have been as much as $100,000 in debt because of flash sale sites. Something about the scarcity and the need to do it right now really interferes with peoples judgment, says Benson.

Another draw is the exclusivity of the sites, as one has to sign up to be a member to receive information about the deals. DeRosier says that isn't the reason for her interest in One Kings Lane, but later she said she was jealous that a designer friend started selling her goods on the site. I felt like shed stolen my secret, DeRosier says. I was disappointed because I was pretending the site was private.

'Aspirational shopping'

One Kings Lane has north of 5 million members, but the fact that DeRosier feels special using it is no accident. Chief Executive Doug Mack cites aspirational shopping, in which a person gets access to a class of goods and people they would normally never associate with, as the key to the sites allure. Thats probably more to the core of One Kings Lane than any other new commerce site on the Web, says Mack. For example, Michael Smith is a famous interior designer for the Obamas. He runs sales of products from his private warehouse on One Kings Lane. Another one of our designers -- Martyn Lawrence Bullard -- also has done work for Elton John and Cher. Entry to this world you could never crack from a money or access perspective is a huge part of our appeal.

It is precisely such fantasies of an affluent celebrity lifestyle that compel most shopaholics. One of the real drivers of compulsive buying disorder is when there is a big discrepancy in who someone feels themselves to be and who they would like to be and how they would like to be seen, says Benson. So buying luxurious goods and belonging to an in website is an attempt to make up for some of what we psychologists call the self-discrepancy gap.

Divorced, DeRosier lives alone with her two pit-bull mixes in a condo crowded with so many purchases she says the neighbors have started to comment. Although she wont disclose how much she has spent, during the summer she purchased numerous lamps, vases, paintings of dogs -- including her favorite of a five-legged one she deems outsider art -- and a 9-foot-tall bookcase by interior designer Alessandra Branca that was so big it had to be disassembled to get in her door.

View original post here:
Anatomy of an Online Flash Sale Addict

Bed bugs make excellent hitchhikers, so check baggage before returning home from a trip. (Courtesy Erie.gov)

WASHINGTON - Yet again, D.C. ranks high among cities that leave its visitors with a souvenir they'd rather forget.

A new Terminix survey lists D.C. as the sixth-most bed bug-infested city in America. This marks a decline from a previous commercial study that put the District at No. 8.

The City of Brotherly Love took top honors, with Cincinnati and the Big Apple right behind.

The list was created using information from 300 Terminix branches throughout the country. The extermination company then ranked cities based on calls from customers and confirmed reports by their exterminators, according to PRNewswire.

Check out the top 10:

1. Philadelphia 2. Cincinnati 3. New York City 4. Chicago 5. Detroit 6. Washington, D.C. 7. Columbus, Ohio 8. San Francisco 9. Denver 10. New Haven, Conn.

These standings show bed bugs continue their reign as scourge of the American public, with five new cities in the top 15 this year: Cleveland, Houston, Indianapolis, Miami and New Haven, Conn.

D.C. was among five other cities that have seen a growing population of the bloodsuckers, along with Columbus, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco. the District was ranked seventh in 2011.

The prevalence of bed bugs has increased as much as 500 percent in the last decade, according to a study from Ohio State University, whose home state has three cities with the worst incidence of the problem pests.

Read more here:
Study: D.C. bed bug problem increasingly worse

Bad news for all your nocturnal hours. There's a new study out ranking U.S. cities based on bed bug populations, and D.C. has moved up the chart in just a few short months.

In March, D.C. had the nation's eighth-highest population of bed bugs, according to a study by Orkin, the pest extermination company. But now, WTOP reports, D.C. has climbed to No. 6.

This is just more unsettling news about creepy crawlies wriggling their way around our mattresses and bedding while we slumber. Last month, it was reported that in addition to being increasingly common in apartment buildings, bed bugs are also squirming their way into the Washington area's single-family homes.

The study released today, compiled from information obtained by Terminix, puts D.C. in a group of six cities where the bed bug population is on an observable upswing. Philadelphia is No. 1, followed by Cincinnati, New York, Chicago and Detroit.

And the study comes with yet another reminder that while they don't carry any known diseases, bed bugs are tough to stamp out, WTOP reports:

"Bedbugs are among the most difficult and expensive urban pests to control. It typically takes a professional to do it right," says Susan Jones, an urban entomologist with the university's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and a household and structural pest specialist.

Follow this link:
Statistic You Probably Didn't Want to Hear: More Bed Bugs in D.C.

Bed Bugs (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

By Jim Melwert

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Start scratching! Philadelphia has overtaken New York City to be named the most bed-bug infested city.

New York held the top spot for the past two years, but Philadelphia takes the top spot in the annual ranking, put together by pest control company Terminix.

Several cities join Philadelphia with growing bed bug populations, including Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The company warns the problem will likely grow as summer travelers encounter bed bugs in hotels, airports, and public transportation.

Hope Mikell from West Philly says, when she travels, not only does she check for bed bugs, she comes prepared. Yes, always, Lysol and Clorox, that helps. And, a blow dryer. Put it on high, the heat, go across the mattress.

Some more advice for travelers: check hotel headboards and the folds in mattresses for bed bugs or dark spots.

When youre in a hotel, hang up all your clothes, never use drawers, never lay anything on the bed and never throw anything on the floor.

And, keep your suitcase on the luggage rack up off the floor, as far from the bed as possible.

Continue reading here:
Start Scratching! Pest Control Company Names Philadelphia Most Bed Bug Infested City