Toronto Reference Library has bed bugs

Bedbugs has nothing to do with social-welfare. Bedbugs hitch rides on clothes, then jump to soft furniture and other clothes. Wherever people come together (IE. waiting rooms) the bedbugs will hitch a ride.

Holy sensationalism, Batman!

Exactly. They're everywhere. But that's not be scare-mongering--you're unlikely to pick them up and carry them home with you. You'd have to have one attach itself to you, and then you'd have to carry it home without it falling off. You'd also have to pick up a male and a female, or eggs, to develop an infestation.

It can happen, but you're much more likely to get them from infested hotel rooms, or neighbours, than from a library or movie theatre.

Now with the reusable bags, the bedbugs will have more opportunities to hitch a ride. Reminder to wash out those bags. The bedbugs won't survive 20 minutes in +40°C heat of a dryer.

Everyone can get bedbugs, but the poor get them more, less because of their hygiene than their housing conditions, including sharing multi-unit buildings with people unable to care for themselves: something those in Rosedale are less afflicted by, no? Also, if you haven't noticed a lot of homeless in libraries, you haven't been in a downtown library for a couple decades, I guess. As a teacher, I've seen rich, poor and middle-class kids get lice. Guess whose family has the means to solve the problem sooner?

S, tearing down the reference library to make another condo is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. They should tear up all the carpet including the carpet they just put down. Tile it all and use area rugs instead. Maybe get new furniture too.

actually, they like books...

I agree with 'Brian' completely!

You can get bed bugs anywhere these days. Bed bugs are not confined to any one socio-economic caste. Dealing with bed bugs requires getting a professional pest control company to come in and deal with it properly. There are good companies out there. http://www.torontoexterminator.ca for example that can do the whole thing including preparation for those that can't or won't and the laundry too.

I have been living in Toronto for around 15 years now. I like to use the services of a good library and have witnessed several cycles of budget-cut related guttings of the Toronto Reference Library and, more recently, the reconfiguration of its main floor area into glorified Internet cafe. The Reference Library used to be a nice place to go to read the papers and look up reference books. In recent years it has been transformed into hang out for the lower echelons of society. Stroll through there today and you see young people chatting noisily (where previously they would have been ushered out for creating a disturbance) people lounging around, people eating fast food, sleeping, etc., etc.... and the smell of some of them is real bad. Are the bed bugs really a surprise? This is what happens when such places are allowed to turn into a cesspool.

Also, those bastards practice incest. Meaning, a male bedbug can't tell if the female he is mating with is actually his sister. Yet another reason why bedbugs can multiply to catastrophic numbers so fast.

There are other C02 products on the market as well which are effective. Products like Beapco's Detection Traps use carbon dioxide and heat to lure and trap bed bugs by mimicking your sleeping body http://beapco.ca/products/quick_response_kit/