January 2010 / Vol.7 / Issue 1

Hello and Welcome to the January Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short (well not this month), sweet and pertinent.

Contents

1. Pest Talk - Phantom Bities.
2. Letter of the Month - more on Mozzies.
3. Monthly Special.
4. Back Issues.

Pest Talk

Welcome to 2010!  We hope you had a great Christmas. This is our 68th newsletter and we are now entering our seventh year of sending out a monthly newsletter.  We started with around 200 subscribers in 2004 and have had over 8,000 people subscribe since then.

Some month's it is hard to come up with something new and interesting to talk about, so please keep your letters coming because they inspire fresh ideas.

I'd like to thank John Fleming, our technical manager, for help with the content below.

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Phantom Bities

(Pronounced bite-ease - meaning a little thing that bites you such as midgees, sand flies - Australian slang)

Case one.

A year ago we had a young woman storm into our office and she was very annoyed.  Not with us, but with her doctor who had moments earlier told her she was mad.  Her exact words… “He said I was mad!”  She had come in to see us for a second opinion.  (Some might say that was proof enough that the doctor was right).

Her problem, as she described it, was that for the past three months she was being eaten alive in her home by very tiny biting insects.  She could feel them everywhere (head to toe) under her skin.  To add to her frustration, no one else in her home suffered from it.  Could we help? What sort of insects are they? Can we kill them? It only happened to her when she was home. 

Case two.

In another case, about 10 years ago, we were asked to treat a home for a lady who also suffered bites from 'invisible' insects.  Her husband and children were fine, never even getting one bite.  In every other way, this lady appeared perfectly normal.  We sprayed her home 4 times.  Fumigated it; looked for bird lice, dust mites, you name it… and still her problem persisted and still no one else experienced it.

Case three.

Yesterday we got a call from a busy office.  It appeared that ‘every day’ after lunch a few of their office staff were attacked by invisible bities.  It didn’t affect everyone, just the same few ladies and only after they returned from lunch.

Do the three stories above have anything in common?

Yes they do.

Scientifically and medically it’s known as delusory parasitosis or delusional parasitosis.  It occurs when a person believes they are being bitten by an insect or bug when in fact there is nothing actually ‘biting’ them at all. If you suffer from it, it doesn't mean you are insane. In fact most of us have had it at one time or another, as we will explain.

Perhaps you may think that this is a strange topic for a pest control newsletter but in fact we probably get more calls about it than individual doctors or medical centres.  It just so happens that most of the enquiries that we receive occur at this time of the year… summer.  Usually they are from office environments that shuffle around forms, letters and other documents all day long.  So why the office, you may ask? 

As you know, paper is made from wood pulp.  When it is examined under a microscope, millions and millions of very tiny splinters can be seen.  Many of these microscopic splinters flake off and settle on surfaces such as desks, shelves and the floor.   Due to the dry environment in air conditioned offices, a lot of these splinters will remain airborne.  It easier to imagine if you recall the last time when you were gazing out a window in the early morning or late afternoon and looking at the rays of the sun filtering through the window at a shallow angle… you see a kind of a haze, well… that haze is mostly made up of very small dust particles. In an office environment the dust includes those little paper splinters.

Australia has hot and humid summers. When office workers go outside during the hottest part of the day for lunch, the pores of their skin will automatically open to perspire; a normal biological function, and when they walk back into the office, those tiny little splinters can lodge in the open pores and cause irritation. The first response is to have a bit of a scratch… consciously or subconsciously, but this only makes it worse because it compounds the problem by forcing the little splinter deeper in, which in turn makes most people scratch even more.

Furthermore, when one person starts itching, it will often psychologically trigger other people in the office to scratching as well, and before long everyone believes that they are being bitten and that the office is infested with fleas or some other type of biting insect.

Case four.

As an example of the office infestation, we know of a story passed on to us by another pest controller who tells of an office he treated for fleas which continued to complain (after his flea treatment) that some members of the staff were still being bitten.  Three times he re-treated the office with a ‘wet’ flea spray and each time the biting subsided, but after a few days the complaints would recur.  After a thorough check, it was confirmed that there were in fact no fleas, but everyone still said they were definitely being bitten by something.

If not fleas, then what was biting?  The check did identify a lot of dust accumulated under desks and in corners.  Samples were taken on some sticky tape and examined under a microscope and those tiny little splinters and lots of other pointy fibers were identified.  The pest controller then decided to conduct a little experiment.  He sprayed some plain water through an atomiser to add a bit of humidity to the office to see what would happen.  You guessed it… the biting subsided for a few days but returned once the air dried out again. The pest controller, now armed with this knowledge, advised the office manager to use a humidifier to increase the humidity and ‘lay the dust’.  Interestingly, the humidifier was only used for that one year because once the problem was eliminated (or more correctly forgotten by those staff previously affected) there was no reoccurrence.

Are we shocking you?

Perhaps this will. Another problem often caused by air conditioners is static electricity.  This too is caused by the dry environment that air conditioners create.  You can build up a charge and get a zap just by rubbing your shoes on the carpet.  Sometimes the sensation is a feeling that you’ve just been bitten.  As a child most of us have taken delight in rubbing our shoes on the carpet and then touching someone next to us on the arm or neck to give them a jolt.

It’s not just the office environment that suffers from delusory parasitosis.  Homes too, can be affected.  Some of the most common causes in conjunction with hot sweaty humid weather are grass allergies, reaction to new soap powder in the washing, synthetic fibres in clothes, fibreglass insulation falling through down lights and exhaust fan openings or other microscopic irritants in the air. 

In one example we had one case where the fibreglass insulation was being blown down through a gap in the ceiling cornice above a rough brick feature wall; and guess what was against the wall?  The sofa!

In another example we found it hard to convince a customer that it was an old blanket put over the vinyl sofa that was the problem.  They wanted to keep the blanket because without it, everyone was sweating and sticking to the vinyl sofa on hot humid summer days.  To prove the point, we shook the blanket in front of the window with the sun in the background and observed the fine particles that flew into the air… the very same fibres that were the cause of all the itches.  The blanket was replaced with a cotton sheet and the problem was solved.

We sometimes get people who send us samples by mail or call into the office with a sample; samples which they believe may contain microscopic biting insects but upon examination through a magnifying glass or microscope only contain bits of fluff, skin flakes or other debris.  There are plainly no insects present and therefore nothing we can do to help.

So, how do you stop these phantom bities?

If you think you are being bitten, the first step is to identify that it is indeed an insect.  All biting insects in Australia are large enough to be seen with the naked eye or a simple magnifying glass; none of them are invisible.  If you are being bitten, then you will most definitely at some time see the culprit.  

Many people who suffer from bites or itches believe that dust mites are the cause.  In fact, dust mites don’t bite; they do however cause dermal and respiratory allergic reactions.  Can pest control sprays cure dust mites?  Unfortunately not; we advise that you should see your doctor or health professional for the rash and start a thorough cleaning and dusting of your home to solve the cause of the problem.

Mites belong to the same Order as ticks, Order Acarina.  Some other mites that affect humans are food mites from stored products, poultry red mite, bryobia mite found on vegetation in the garden (commonly fruit trees and clover), straw mite (common in the old days of straw mattresses), grass mites and bird mites.  A good shower can cleanse you of most of these if you get them.

There is one other insect mite worth a mention.  It is the Scabies mite.  Under a magnifying glass, it looks a bit like a crab.  Scabies is a contagious skin infection caused by the microscopic mite Sarcoptes scabei.  They live on your skin and can burrow under your skin and are usually found in the warmer genital area.  They can be transmitted by personal skin contact or from the sharing of bedding or towels.  Scabies is characterised by persistent itching and skin irritation.  Sometimes people joke and say someone has the crabs if they are caught itching their genitals.  Can pest control sprays fix the problem?  No, see your doctor or health professional and they will prescribe a suitable ointment.

Finally a very different form of delusional parasitosis happens to drug addicts. One of the known side effects of illegal drugs is an uncontrolable urge to itch and scratch hard on the skin... yet one more good reason to never do drugs.

Well, I don’t know about you right now, but this topic has gotten to me and I’m off to give my phantom bities a really good scratch.  Till next month then…

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More on Mozzies

Last month we discussed various mosquito issues. We have had the following information sent to us by one of our long time customers and we would like to share it with you:

Hi Jerry

Further to your blurb about mosquitoes, an apparently well-documented repellent is Avon Skin-So-Soft moisturiser - seems mozzies hate the smell and the bonus is it's good for your skin and smells nice. might help your wife?

I've also heard that listerine or similar sprayed around a table can repel the blighters too!

Cheers

Lynne

Please share it.

Well, that's our newsletter for this month.  We hope you found it interesting.  If so, please forward it to your family, friends and work colleagues who may appreciate it also.  Thank you.

Monthly Special Promotion.

This special is no longer available. Please go to our current newsletter for this month's special.

Back Issues

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The Greenpest News is Published by J & A Furnell Nominees P/L; Shop 23a Franklin Square, 60 Railway Street, Mudgeeraba, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of Jerry Furnell. The reader is encouraged to seek further information from appropriate government and statutory departments before taking any action based on this material alone.

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See you again next month.

Always... At your service,

Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.

Copyright 2010 Green Termite Bait Systems & Green Pest Control. All rights reserved.

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