On the heels of a Toronto report warning the city is losing its battle with bedbugs, new research suggests that plastic bowls and talcum powder can be powerful weapons in the war.

"Bedbug interceptors" — $2 Ikea bowls dusted with baby powder and placed under furniture legs— "are very useful tools to monitor and inspect bedbug infestation," said Dr. Changlu Wang, an entomologist at Rutgers University, in an interview Tuesday.

Both Wang and a study released this week for the city of Toronto concur that bedbug infestation is growing rapidly, fighting it is expensive and nothing short of a concerted and unified plan will stop it.

DDT was highly effective in all but eradicating bedbugs in Western countries in the 1940s and 1950s but at the cost of its extreme toxicity, Wang said. Frequent misdiagnoses by doctors, increased travel, slow public response and poor understanding of effective control methods have brought bedbugs back and are allowing them to multiply.

"Before 2003, they have been characterized by Toronto Public Health as sporadic and mild," the report by WoodGreen Community Services and Habitat Services for the city and the province said. "In 2003, a Toronto study showed that there were only 46 reports of bed bugs to Toronto Public Health but by 2008, (there were) almost 1,500 bed bug infestations between March and October."

Tiny, resilient and devious, bedbugs hide in electrical outlets, laptop vents, shoe seams and book spines during the day, can walk down an apartment hallway, live up to 18 months without feeding and, in egg form, can resist the suck of a vacuum cleaner.

In Wang's study, only half of the 16 apartments came through bedbug-free, mostly because of the human factor: people who wouldn't or couldn't afford to dump grossly infested furniture or wouldn't follow the tedious, painstaking methods to eradicate them, including ditching or cleaning up clutter.

The researchers used a combination of wrapping mattresses, hot steam cleaning, furniture legs stuck in the bowls and then either two pesticide treatments: diatomaceous earth dust or chlorfenapyr spray. Most striking, said Wang, were the clumps of dead bedbugs in the bowls days after they thought the insects had been eliminated.

Since furniture and bedding can't be directly doused with pesticide, he said, the bowls are a strong alternative. The system involved placing a small bowl with a bottom coating of talcum powder and diatomaceous earth, a kind of talc, inside a larger bowl and putting furniture legs in the bowls.

Initially, Wang said, they used ethylene glycol in the larger bowls but developed concerns about its toxicity to pets. Talcum powder is slippery and harmless to humans but punctures the bugs' shells, dehydrating them.

Wang, who has advised Toronto hotels, travel agencies and pest-control consultants, warns that bedbugs deterred from one apartment often just jump to the next. "Apartment manages and contractors have to inspect the neighbours. They'll find at least 60 per cent of the neighbours also have bugs. There has to be a program or they can never be controlled."

Hotels, facing quickly damaged reputations, will usually take the expensive and quick eradication route of enveloping a building in a four-hour barrage of steam at 44 C or above, said Wang. Apartment dwellers are at the mercy of fellow tenants and managers.

"Toronto Community Housing has had to increase its pest control budget from $1 million in total to $2.5 million for bed bugs alone," the WoodGreen report said.

"There is a stigma attached to having bed bugs and it causes hardship for those with infestations," Steve Floros of TCH is quoted as saying in the report. "There is a false perception that individuals with a bed bug infestation must not be clean. There have been occasions when

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Echoing Wang, Cathy Loik of Toronto Public Health said, "We need to develop strategies for entire buildings, mass education campaigns for the public at large, increase social assistance for vulnerable populations, have more public awareness to reduce stigma, get landlords on board teaching people integrated pest management, stop self-treating with over-the-counter products (as this builds resistance in bed bugs)."

The report calls on the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to lead the education and eradication campaign.