Bed Bugs Found at Victoria Secrets Points to the shift from Treatment to Prevention

A small infestation was found at the Victoria Secrets on 58th Street and Lexington in NYC. They brought in a dog and used chryonite to treat the area, also taking away the infested merchandise from that area. The funniest thing that was noted in the article by New York Magazine was the comment by Timothy Wong, technical director of M&M Environmental. “”The dog is only two feet high.” That is both hilarious and very important. In the journal entry put out in 2007 by Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC), they mention that bed bugs like to go up walls.  This is why  apartments used to have a metal ledge 3/4 of the way up the wall. The bed bugs would stop crawling upwards when they got to the ledge and then people would regularly torch the underside to reduce the population. Ah, bed bug management, old school.

Everyone agrees that prevention is key. Many stores in New York are working with Wong to create preventative routines where the dogs are brought in regularly to make sure there is no infestation.  I am really pleased to hear this, as I’m sure are you.

I think it would be great if buildings constructed in the future would have DE dusted all throughout their wall cavities. This would save so much money for future residents who do get infestations, or even curtail an infestation from spreading into unseen cavities in the walls. For Pro pesticide people, I suppose it would be residual pesticides sprayed or dusted in wall cavities but I don’t know if those pesticides would remain efficacious over time.