![]() ![]() They are passed onto a pest control company, and if bedbugs are found the book is destroyed. In Toronto, library books are visually inspected when they are returned and library staff will seal any suspect books away in plastic bags, says Rankin. Bookshelves are a difficult place for them to survive, so highly circulated books like the one Cooper was reading are the most likely carriers. However, books are only attractive to the insects when they are near humans, says entomologist Gangloff-Kaufmann. People bring books home and they put them on the nightstand, they put them on their beds and bedbugs love cracks and crevices.”įemales can lay eggs in the spines of hardcover books, or lurk under the paper covers. “But (are bedbugs in library books) common? Yes. you may have a better chance of catching bedbugs from riding the TTC,” says Daniel Mackie, technical services manager at Greenleaf Pest Control. ![]() A full inspection was also done of the branch. It was sealed then taken away, heat-treated, steam-cleaned and returned to the branch, says Gail Rankin, Toronto Public Library senior manager of facilities management. ![]() The calls are split evenly between finding the bugs in furniture at various branches and finding them in books.Ĭritchley says when bedbug sightings are reported, they are investigated and if necessary, treated by a pest control company, like in early November, when a chair at the same Beaches library was found to have bedbugs. Over the past year the library has had 24 confirmed bedbug incidents out of 38 reported. it’s certainly not something we want our customers to be scared of at all,” says Toronto Public Library spokesperson Ana-Maria Critchley. “But I put books on hold all the time, and they come in from all over the city.”įinding bedbugs in books is a rare problem “that the library is aware of and we have very strong treatment and preventative measures in place. She has gone to the Beaches library at least twice a week for 20 years. “Should I go to another branch?” she wonders. “I use books like a drug and I can’t afford to buy the number of books that I read.” “I’m really upset because I don’t know what this means to me as a consumer,” says Cooper, who spent the morning laundering sheets and vacuuming the room, just in case. The first live bugs in Vancouver-area public libraries were found in books last year and similar stories abound in libraries south of the border. In 2010, bedbugs were reported at the Toronto Reference library and at the Yorkville and Parliament branches. The reason that bedbugs show up in libraries is their use as a place for the community.” “But I don’t think libraries are big players (in transferring bedbugs). “They go with us everywhere,” says entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann at Cornell University. Like movie theatres, hospital waiting rooms and subways, the Toronto public library system - which operates 98 branches with 1.2 million members and an annual circulation of 31 million items - is no exception to the bedbug scourge plaguing urban areas across North America. In the morning, a third bedbug emerged from the pages, crawling slowly around the bag and over the hardcover copy of Watching the Dark. She killed it, and immediately sealed the book inside a Ziploc bag. And then I thought no, that’s not possible,” she said. “I’m pretty intuitive and I immediately thought bedbug. She squished it into a smear of what looked like blood. Half an hour in, a brown bug the size of an apple seed skittered across the page. The library remained open as usual on Thursday, she said.Īs per library protocol, another check will be done 48 hours later.Ĭurled up in the spare bed in the wee hours of morning, Star staff photographer David Cooper’s wife Peggi-jean, cracked open the new Peter Robinson murder mystery she got from the public library Tuesday afternoon. The library will be steam-treated before it opens on Friday. Toronto Public Library spokesperson Ana-Maria Critchley said a pest control agency conducted a sweep of the library and discovered a small group of bedbugs. Evidence of bedbugs was found in the Beaches public library Thursday after a woman discovered three of the pests in a book borrowed from there on Tuesday. ![]()
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