Next time your job grinds on you, consider Matt Remmen.
He has to give blood on a regular basis.
To hungry bed bugs.
“I’d rather be bitten by bed bugs than mosquitoes,” Matt said, displaying welts on his wrist where the vampire bugs had enjoyed a few drinks. “But I’m an entomologist. It puts me in a weird place.”
On Wednesday that place was Morristown town hall, where landlords and housing inspectors from around the region gathered to hear Matt and his colleagues from Bell Environmental demonstrate how to beat these beastly bugs.
Highlights included hosing a laptop with liquid carbon dioxide at minus-120 degrees (who hasn’t wanted to do that?) and setting loose Roscoe, a lemon beagle with a nose for bed bugs, to sniff out a vial of the nasty critters hidden in a couch at the seniors center in town hall.
Parsippany-based Bell Environmental owns six beagles and they need to train with real live bed bug pheromones, from real live bed bugs. Which is where Matt comes in.
The good news: Bed bugs don’t seem to transmit disease.
That’s really the only good news.
Bed bug infestations have been on the rise across the U.S. for about five years, according to Bell spokesman Bob Zeitlinger. The insects live in fancy hotels and second-hand furniture, and hitchhike in luggage and clothing. They love mattress box springs.
It’s not a matter of cleanliness, either. Unlike cockroaches, bed bugs don’t feed on crumbs.
“They’re feeding on you,” said Bell Senior Manager Peter Di Eduardo.
Your carbon dioxide exhalations and body heat give you away. Bed bug poop often is mistaken for mold. The droppings actually are dried blood–yours.
A few minutes at medium- to high heat in a clothes dryer will kill the little buggers. But they leave behind lots of eggs. And they are patient. They can last 400 days between meals, Matt said.
Pesticides only make bed bugs tougher, he added.
Their bites can be painful–and so can the exterminators’ bill. Bell Environmental charges about $1,000 per room to eradicate bed bugs. This takes two visits over a two-week span; in the interim, you have to seal all your worldly possessions in plastic bags.
Bed bugs also have a knack for inciting back-biting among humans. A 2008 infestation at a Morristown seniors complex on Early Street escalated from finger-pointing to a legal battle between the town housing authority and then-Mayor Donald Cresitello.
Responsibility for eradicating bed bugs varies among jurisdictions.
In Parsippany, an ordinance requires landlords to deal promptly with bed bugs. Tenants must cooperate with such efforts or face penalties, said township Housing Inspector Kim Jensen. She fields 30- to 40 calls a year about bed bugs from the township’s 26 apartment complexes, she estimated.
Tenants are on the hook in Morristown, according to the town property maintenance code (section 13-49). Yet the wording has some ambiguity: “Every occupant of a [multi-family dwelling] shall be responsible for eliminating all conditions causing infestation which are caused by the occupant and also those conditions which are subject to and under his exclusive control.” (Emphasis added.)
Proving who caused an infestation is almost as hard as eliminating it; bed bugs, as noted earlier, really get around. And they don’t obey orders.
Landlords can be held responsible if tenants fail to fulfill their legal obligations, and vice versa, according to another section of Morristown’s property code (Article IV, 13-9, 13-10).
Because bed bugs don’t spread infection, the town Health Division contends they are a matter for housing officials to investigate.
Because bed bugs bite people, housing officials think it’s a health matter.
For now, the ball is in Tommy Alexander’s court. Morristown’s chief code enforcement officer said he dealt with “10 to 20 cases” of bed bug infestation last year.
“It’s becoming very, very serious,” he said. “I don’t have a doubt in my mind: It’s a health issue. People are being bitten by these things.”
Tommy said he tries to get landlords and tenants to split the costs of exterminators if tenants are financially strapped. When a tenant balked this year, he took him to municipal court and won, he said.
He said he is talking with town attorneys about crafting an ordinance to require landlords to inspect apartments for bed bugs before new tenants move in.
State Assembly bill 3203 would make landlords responsible for eradicating bed bugs. The measure, sponsored by Assemblywoman Joan Quigley (D-Hudson), passed the Assembly in 2009. So far, however, state Senators are not itching to do the same.
MORRISTOWN CARTOONIST PAUL LAUD SINKS HIS TEETH INTO BED BUGS
ROSCOE’S TRAVEL TIPS FOR AVOIDING BED BUGS
