By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — In the war against bedbugs, openness and sanity may be New Yorkers' most crucial weapons, experts emphasized at a briefing on the issue in Midtown Thursday.
"You've got a problem," said Pepe Peruyero, a former K9 unit police officer who now specializes in training dogs to sniff out bedbugs. "Discuss it, or at the end of the day you're not gonna be able to resolve it."
Peruyero was part of a panel of experts speaking about the city's bedbug pandemic to a packed audience at the Real Estate Board of New York Thursday morning.
While the panel convened to discuss the role that real estate owners and managers can play in curbing the bedbug problem, conversation continually turned to the importance of easing the sigma that surrounds the issue and often deters affected individuals from telling their neighbors.
Entomologist Louis Sorkin, who shared the stage with Peruyero at the briefing, argued that embarrassment and fear of being ostracized are especially dangerous when combating bedbugs in an urban setting like Manhattan.
There's a tendency, Sorkin explained, for New Yorkers to attempt to exterminate the bugs from their apartments in as discrete a manner as possible.
"[But] If you don't treat the whole building – if you only treat one apartment at a time – you won't get rid of the problem," explained Sorkin, who's studied insects at the Museum of Natural History since 1978.
In many cases, residents who treat their infestations in secret may simply drive the bugs into neighboring apartments, Sorkin added.
Asked if Manhattan would ever see an end to the bedbug pandemic, Sorkin speculated that the problem would get worse before it gets better, finally petering out in five or six years, when residents become fully committed to addressing it.
So what is full commitment?
Sorkin suggested learning to identify the bugs ("It's a very distinct odor – it's actually kind of fresh, like cilantro and coriander"), which vary drastically in appearance throughout their life cycle, and maintaining awareness of possible transmission sites at all times. Sorkin said he carries a flashlight with him wherever he goes, inspecting seats whenever he sees a movie in the theaters.
The entomologist, who brought several colonies of bedbugs with him to display at the Real Estate Board panel, also expressed hope for new technologies, like electronic bedbug scent detectors, online registries for infected locations and portable heating devices, which individuals can use to heat their belongings beyond bedbug habitable temperatures.
For better or worse, George Shea, co-founder of Bed Bug Super Dogs, which sponsored Thursday's expert panel, said he believes the stigma surrounding bedbugs is beginning to give way to anxiety about the growing crisis.
"I honestly think there is a huge stigma to having bedbugs [but] that is going to fade, it has faded," Shea explained. "What hasn't faded is this level of anxiety, which borders on irrational and in some cases is irrational."
While Shea observed that the transition had lead to increased openness and more effective treatment of bedbug infestations, he noted that it may not be an all-around healthy trade-off.
"The number of people that are overwhelmed by anxiety is amazing," Shea, who admitted to taking "hyper-cautious" bedbug precautions, like storing his luggage in the bathtub when he stays in hotels, explained.
"A lot of what you end up doing…has to do with the psychology side of it."
