LEWISTON — Local and state health experts, exterminators and researchers will come together Friday to talk about getting beyond the bedbug problem.
“It’s a national problem and you always hear people talking about it,” said Phil Nadeau, Lewiston’s deputy city administrator and chairman of the Lewiston-Auburn Public Health Committee.
“The question that everybody asks is: What can we do about it?” he said.
The Lewiston-Auburn Public Health Committee will host a half-day forum from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday devoted to answering that question.
“There are a number of people who are experts on various aspects of this,” Nadeau said. “So, we have answers and we want to get it to the public in some fashion.”
The forum will be held in Chase Hall at Bates College. It’s free of charge. Registration for the seminar has closed, but more information is available at www.lewistonauburnpublichealth.org.
James Dill, pest management specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension will be the keynote speaker.
Afterward, participants will break up into sessions devoted to four topics: preventing an outbreak, recovering from one, legal issues affecting landlords and working with community members who could be more susceptible to bedbug infestations.
“We know that bedbugs today can be a problem anywhere people gather in large groups,” Nadeau said. “That could mean apartments, it could mean hotels and it could mean other places.”
Movie theaters can be problems, Nadeau said, especially if the theaters have cloth seats and carpeted floors.
“They are certainly more comfortable, but we know the less cloth you use, the less of a bedbug problem you’ll have,” he said. “If you have a movie theater with tile floors and vinyl seats, they’ll be pretty safe.”
The legal issues seminar will discuss landlord rights and responsibilities, as well as tenant concerns.
“For example, one problem has been people picking up old furniture or mattresses on the side of the road,” Nadeau said. “People used to do that a lot, but it’s probably not a good idea anymore. So, what can a landlord do to limit that kind of thing? What can a landlord do to guard against that?”
Nadeau said the committee planned to issue a report later this year based on the forum.
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