Canine detectives sniffing out the spreading bedbug menace in New York

 ‘Canine detectives’ are increasingly being called in to bust bed bugs in New York City hotels, theatres and even upmarket residential buildings, as the infestation becomes a pandemic and threatens home owners with depreciating real estate values and stigma.

These trained dogs can swiftly go under covers, around the tiniest of corners and search houses in a fraction of the time taken by human inspectors – making them the most effective search parties, said experts in an early morning conference on Thursday to discuss way to contain and guard against this spreading menace in the city.

“A dog basically does an MRI of your house with a nose. While human inspectors often take days to look through a house and can still miss some bugs, dogs can sniff a house inside out in seven seconds and with give no false alerts,” said Pepe Peruyero, founder of Bed Bug Super Dogs, as he spoke to a packed hall of journalists, house owners, tenants and retail managers.

  source: Care Pest & Wildlife Control

Peruyero has spent three years devising a proprietory method for training dogs to detect live bugs and viable eggs and finds it curious when people quiz him about dogs’ abilities to sniff out these bugs. “Well, we knew they can detect narcotics and explosives all along, right? Bed bugs are no different. A dog just needs to be imprinted with the principal smell,” he explained. His firm has already conducted 100,000 inspections this year.

“I had not heard of bed bugs even once in my office in the first 25 years of practicing my profession. In the last 2 years, I have heard it at least a few hundred times,” said Jeffery Turkel, partner in real estate law firm Rosenberg & Estis P.C who specializes in landlord tenant litigation which he says are increasingly being triggered by these bugs.

Bedbugs, that were once nearly eradicated, have now spread across the city in part because of the decline in the use of DDT and increased movement of humans and goods.  

These pesky critters can jump onto your shoes, clothes, books, office drawers, old mattresses and as Peruyero recalls, “were even been found in an X-box once.” They travel long distances – sometimes dubbed the best hitchhikers – surviving up to a year without food and can live in colder climates as well, explained entomologist Louis Sorkin.

Found in the best of homes and most public of places -- from creeping in the basement of the Empire Estate building to AMC’s movie theater in Times Square, around a Victoria’s Secret store in mid-Manhattan and even into the Brooklyn district attorney’s office -- these blood suckers even in one remote apartment can drive down rentals in entire buildings and are causing unusual landlord-tenant lawsuits.

In these litigations, both parties are fighting over who got these insects in the house and by implication, should pay for the clean-up. A New York State law now requires home owners to disclose to prospective tenants any infestation incident in the lat 12 months.

According to the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation cited by a New York Times story, bedbug violations have risen 67 % in the last two years. For the year ended June 30, the city’s 311 help line recorded 12,768 bedbug complaints, 16 % more than the previous year and 39 % more the year before. A New York City community health survey showed that in 2009, 1 in 15 New Yorkers had bedbugs in their home.

The silver lining: the bugs do not spread diseases or impose a health risk.

 But they cause something worse – massive stigma and ostracization in communities and among friends. “I was going through the cases in this area and was surprised to find the names of landlords and tenants blacked out. I had only see that happen in family law, assault, abuse and divorce cases,” said Turkel who said he suggested his clients get the clean-up done “at nights and as quietly as possible.”

 The sniffer dogs in most cases who map these infestations have been seen to achieve as high as 97% accuracy rate compared to a 30% visual, human detection rate.

 But the dogs can only spot the bugs, they can’t contain the menace. “For a city that spends and trades in billions of dollars and has hundred of architects, interior designers and health workers, we have dogs as our first line of defense? That surely can’t be good news,” said Turkel.

 

Comments

[dawn]

bhuma this is awesome

[Nilima]

Interesting! In India the new generation doesn't know what are bud-bugs. Menace in US. So after a couple of generations people in U S know how it hurts to have bugs here and there.