Jackson Heights Life

Access-A-Ride workers say Long Island City location is infested with bedbugs

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

Access-A-Ride workers say Long Island City location is infested with bedbugs
At rally to demand better work conditions, Access-A-Ride customer service rep John Wau shows bedbug bites on his arm, which he says he got from office.

Dozens of irate workers rallied outside a city contractor's office building in Long Island City Wednesday, demanding that management fumigate their workplace after a year-long bedbug infestation.

The bugs have been found in the offices for Access-A-Ride dispatchers on Northern Blvd. since the summer of 2008, but management ignored the problem until a pest-sniffing dog confirmed the cubicles were overrun with the insects, workers charged.

"I hope it will force some pressure for them to do something," said John Wau, 48, who showed pinprick-sized scars along his right arm that he said came from numerous bedbug bites.

"They keep telling us not to worry, that everything is okay," said Wau, a customer service representative. "But they're not doing anything about it."



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/11/19/2009-11-19_offices_are_bugged_accessaride_workers_say_lic_location_is_full_of_pests.html?print=1&page=all#ixzz0XRNVWTxG

Interesting New York Times article on the use and accuracy of dogs as a means of detecting bedbugs. 

The New York Times
Dogs That Detect Bedbugs
By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: March 10, 2010

CRUISER made four house calls on a recent rain-soaked Tuesday. There were two happy endings and two unhappy ones, a fairly typical outcome for a typical day in the life of a bedbug-sniffing puggle.

“Except that there’s nothing typical about this business,” said his handler, Jeremy Ecker, 35, whose six-month-old company, the Bed Bug Inspectors, has vetted hotels, college dorms and Midtown office buildings, suburban homes, bare-bones Brooklyn rentals and tony Manhattan co-ops. (Mr. Ecker, who charges $350 for a residential inspection, is an independent inspector, meaning he has no affiliation with an exterminator, though many hire him to check a property they have treated.)

Increasingly, real estate lawyers are urging buyers in contract to inspect apartments before they close, and in their advertising, many pest control companies exhort would-be tenants to “inspect before you rent.” And dogs like Cruiser can inspect a room in minutes, whereas lesser mammals like human beings need hours to conduct a visual inspection.

Bedbug-sniffing dogs, adorable yet stunningly accurate — entomology researchers at the University of Florida report that well-trained dogs can detect a single live bug or egg with 96 percent accuracy — are the new and furry front line in an escalating and confounding domestic war.

While experts cite a host of reasons for the upsurge, they agree on one thing: the bugs, which were mostly eradicated in this country at midcentury by now-banned pesticides like DDT but remained a constant scourge overseas, are finding their way back to the United States through an increase in global travel.

[Follow above link for complete article.]