Yikes, bedbugs! EPA looks to stop resurgence

By DINA CAPPIELLO 

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — "Don't let the bedbugs bite." Doesn't seem so bad in a cheerful bedtime rhyme, but it's becoming a really big problem now that the nasty critters are invading hospitals, college dorms and even swanky hotels. With the most effective pesticides banned, the government is trying to figure out how to respond to the biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II.

Bedbugs live in the crevices and folds of mattresses, sofas and sheets. Then, most often before dawn, they emerge to feed on human blood.

Faced with rising numbers of complaints to city information lines and increasingly frustrated landlords, hotel chains and housing authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever bedbug summit Tuesday.

Organized by one of the agency's advisory committees, the two-day conference drew about 300 participants to a hotel in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington. An Internet site notes that the hotel in question has had no reports of bedbugs.

One of the problems with controlling the reddish-brown insects, according to researchers and the pest control industry, is that there are few chemicals on the market approved for use on mattresses and other household items that are effective at controlling bedbug infestations.

Unlike roaches and ants, bedbugs are blood feeders and can't be lured by bait. It's also difficult for pesticides to reach them in every crack and crevice they hide out in.

"It is a question of reaching them, finding them," said Harold Harlan, an entomologist who has been raising bedbugs for 36 years, feeding them with his own blood. He has the bites to prove it.

The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs in the U.S. At the same time, the appleseed-sized critters have developed a pesticide resistance because those chemicals are still in use in other countries.

Increasing international travel has also helped them to hitchhike into the U.S.

"One of our roles would be to learn of new products or safer products. ... What we are concerned about is that if people take things into their own hands and start using pesticides on their mattresses that aren't really registered for that, that's a problem," said Lois Rossi, director of the registration division in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.

The EPA is not alone in trying to deal with the problem. An aide to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., says the congressman plans to reintroduce legislation next week to expand grant programs to help public housing authorities cope with infestations.

The bill will be called the "Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite Act."

"It was clear something needed to be done," said Saul Hernandez, Butterfield's legislative assistant.

Bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases. But their bites can cause infections and allergic reactions in some people. The insects release an anticoagulant to get blood flowing, and they also excrete a numbing agent so their bites don't often wake their victims.

Those often hardest hit are the urban poor, who cannot afford to throw out all their belongings or take other drastic measures. Extermination can cost between $400-$900.

So bedbug problems increase, said Dini Miller, an entomologist and bedbug expert at Virginia Tech, who until 2001 saw bedbugs only on microscope slides dating from the 1950s. Now she gets calls and e-mails several times a day from people at their wits' end.

"I can't tell you how many people have spent the night in their bathtubs because they are so freaked out by bedbugs," Miller said. "I get these people over the phone that have lost their marbles."

Because the registration of new pesticides takes so long, one thing the EPA could do is to approve some pesticides for emergency use, Miller said.

Another tactic would be to screen pesticides allowed for use by farmers to see if they are safe in household settings.

Representatives of the pest control industry will be pushing for federal funding for research into alternative solutions, such as heating, freezing or steaming the bugs out of bedrooms.

"We need to have better tools," said Greg Baumann, a senior scientist at the National Pest Management Association. "We need EPA to consider all the options for us."

On the Net:

• Harvard School of Public Health: 

• University of Kentucky Insect Advice: 

The Ones Who Got It Right

From: "Ralph Nader" <info@nader.org>
Date: April 3, 2009 6:40:33 PM EDT
To: alerts@lists.nader.org
Subject: The Ones Who Got It Right

Why is it that well regarded people working the fields of corporate
power and performance who repeatedly predicted the Wall Street bubble
and its bursting receive so little media and attention?

Instead, the public is still being exposed to the comments and
writings of people like Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, James Glassman
(of Dow 36,000 notoriety) while others like Timothy Geithner, Larry
Summers, and Gary Gensler are newly-appointed at high levels in the
Obama Administration. These men were variously architects,
rationalizers and implementers of the massive de-regulation and non-
regulation that unleashed the epic forces of greed, speculation and
ruination of millions of livelihoods and trillions of dollars other
peoples' money worldwide.

Here are some of the people who got it right—early and often:

1. William Greider—author and columnist with The Nation magazine—wrote
books (including Secrets of the Temple, 1988) and articles warning
about the Federal Reserve and the anti-democratic consequences of
rampant corporate globalization.

2. Robert Kuttner whose books (e.g. Everything for Sale, 1999) and
articles predicted what will happen to workers and pensions when the
regulatory state is tossed aside by the corporatists operating inside
and outside of government.

3. Jim Hightower whose books (If the Gods Has Meant Us to Vote, They
Would Have Given Us Candidates, 2000) and the monthly mass circulation
Hightower Lowdown newsletter pointed out again and again the abuses of
the "greedhounds" and vastly overpaid corporate bosses that have run
consumers of health care, credit, cars and banks into the ground.

4. Nomi Prins (Other Peoples Money, 2004) a former managing director
of Goldman Sachs, quit in disgust and began disclosing how these giant
Wall St. firms deal and how, with their ideological backers, they wove
their webs of deception and fraud against investors, students
borrowing money for college, taxpayers ripped off by corporate
contractors, sick people gouged and insurance companies denying
legitimate claims. (See her book Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are
Picking Your Pocket, 2008)

5. John R. MacArthur, author (The Selling of "Free Trade", 2001)
columnist and publisher of Harpers, authored a sharp, prophetic
criticism of NAFTA's effect on U.S. and Mexican workers. Finally, on
March 24, 2009 the New York Times featured a report titled "NAFTA's
Promise, UNfulfilled."

6. Robert A.G. Monks—the leading shareholder rights advocate in our
country warned for years in books (latest Corpocracy, 2008) ,
articles, testimony and standup challenges at corporate annual
meetings that keeping investors—the owners of these companies—
powerless and dominated by corporate executives would lead to big
trouble. Everyday, you can now see the ways that avaricious abuses of
executive compensation by Wall Street led to cooking the books, hiding
the debts and wildly losing other peoples' money.

7. Tom Stanton, whose 1991 book State of Risk, exposed the dangerously
undercapitalized condition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and predicted
coming disaster if this reckless leveraging continued. By comparison,
a year ago Fannie and Freddie's federal regulator, James B. Lockhart
III called fears of a bailout "nonsense" and amazingly further lowered
the required capital levels months before their collapse and takeover
a few months later. Mr. Lockhart is still in his job heading a new
regulatory entity over these two goliaths.

8. Republican Kevin Phillips, (latest book Bad Money: Reckless
Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American
Capitalism, 2007) whose numerous writings on Wall Street power and
money and the dictatorial rule of the plutocracy were wise,
historically—rooted premonitions of future collapse.

9. Dean Baker, (latest Plunder and Blunder, 2004) Washington-based
economist, warned repeatedly earlier in this decade of the housing
bubble and the calamitous consequences once it burst. He even sold his
own home in 2004 and became a tenant, so convinced was he of the
housing precipice.

10. Then there is Naomi Klein who has been documenting how economic
disasters produced by corporations and their governmental cohorts end
up not with reforms but with further increasing the power of the
corporate state. (See Shock Doctrine the Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
2007)

Chances are that outside the independent media and an occasional
public tv-radio interview, you have not seen or read them in the mass
media. But they were right, so why haven't you? Well, first of all,
they took on commercial interests and called them out by name and
specific misdeeds. Take it from one who knows, big advertisers do not
hesitate to let their media outlets know about their displeasure.
Publishers, editors and producers will deny being affected by such
realities of the bottom line but money talks—not always but enough to
screen out or marginalize the provocative early warners.

Second, these early warners are not like their counterparts such as
the market fundamentalists and other active corporatists in the world
of writers and commentators. The latter meet and plan often and
ferociously attach themselves to political and corporate leaders.
While the progressive forecasters do not connect either with each
other or with their policy allies on Capitol Hill as much. The media
likes to see growing power like that of the intertwined Heritage
Foundation with the Reagan regime and their supporters in Congress.

Third, there is this sense that these progressives are exposing
conditions that the reporters themselves should be revealing. So why
not publish staff-driven magazine-style features instead of
publicizing outsiders and covering an unfolding story as reportage.
Journalistic prizes go to the former. But, they're not the same either
in reader impact or for change.

Finally, there are establishment figures who tried, in their own way,
to blow the whistle—James Grant, Henry Kaufman and, twenty five years
ago, Felix Rohatyn come to mind. Their astute alarms regarding
excessive risk-taking were ignored. They are not getting much media
play either.

Maybe it's also a cultural thing. Big book deals, radio talk shows,
promotions and quotable celebrity status go to the rogues, the grossly
negligent, the suppressors of truth and the wrongdoers. They're just
so much more exciting!

This is a fast road to a state of decay.

End.

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RONALD REAGAN'S SECRET

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens.

Why is it so had to find a leader who can listen?

Because it's easy to confuse listening to individuals with "going with the crowd" or "following the polls." It's easy for a leader with a vision to give up on listening because, after all, most people want you to be average, and that doesn't get you anywhere. If Henry Ford had listened, the old saying goes, we'd have better buggy whips today, not cars.

The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you heard what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said.

When Graham Weston, executive chairman of Rackspace, wanted to persuade his talented and somewhat skittish staff to move with him to the new headquarters in a depressed area of town, he didn't lecture them or even try to cajole them. All he did was listen. He met with every one of the employees who was hesitating about the move and let them air their views. That's what it took to lead them: he listened.

Listen, really listen. Then decide and move on.

Seth Godin  : Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us (2008 - pp. 127-8)