EPA's Bedbug Summit

Last week I attended the bed bug summit that was sponsored by the EPA and found it to be very interesting. The brightest brains from across the pest control industry was there along with representative from the hotel industry, schools, HUD, apartment industry and government, all gathered to discuss what Dr. Potter calls the "perfect Storm" Bedbugs. After listening to a rather bleak summary of university findings on the effectiveness of our chemicals against these critters and other presentations from various government agencies, we broke into groups and came up with recommendations to present to the EPA so they can start to get a handle on the importance of this issue becoming a "pandemic" and effecting the economy in a negative way. When you think about it, bedbugs can be linked to public transportation, furniture and mattress delivery services, laundry mats, schools, hotels, motels, theaters, anywhere the public gathers, and with no real silver bullet to kill these bed bugs it is a scary future. Maybe the EPA will ease the requirements or costs of registering products or let us bring back the old stuff that worked. One thing that everyone agreed on was the fact that we need an aggressive public awareness campaign to get people away from the stigma attached which will hopefully lend itself to early intervention. One thing is for sure, it will only get worse before it gets better.