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Please Wrap Your Discarded Mattress, It's The Law Whether You Have Bed Bugs Or Not (You Probably Do)
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jun 28, 2013
Modified Jun 28, 2013
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Rebecca Fishbein/Gothamist
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jun 28, 2013
Modified Jun 28, 2013
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The end of the month is nigh, and if you're moving out come June 30th, you may be inclined to toss your mattress and/or bedframe. But if you do choose to leave your bed for the Sanitation Department, remember that beds are home base for everyone's favorite household parasite from hell, and New York City law requires that you wrap your mattress in plastic before putting it out on the street. Or else.
We spotted this bare futon mattress lounging outside a Bushwick apartment building this morning, its downy nooks and crannies rife with homes for hungry bed bugs and their eggs. This isn't the first time we've seen an unwrapped mattress thus disposed in the neighborhood—one that is certainly no stranger to bedbugs—and we doubt that it'll be the last. But even if you are one million, trillion percent convinced you are bug-and-fancy-free, all mattresses, including futon mattresses, and box springs must be encased in a sealed plastic bag when discarded for trash pickup. And if the threat of a $100 fine doesn't scare you, maybe the threat of being under bed bug siege will, because though your mattress is probably devoid of buggies, your neighbor's might not be.
Bed bug complaints in the city have decreased since they took the city by nightmarish storm in 2011. But just because people aren't complaining about them doesn't mean they're not biting, and they tend to increase their activity in the summer. In conclusion, bed bugs are in your clothes, schools, library books and Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper offices, but most of all they're in your beds, so wrap them up (BUT DON'T BURN THEM) before they crawl into your brain and take nightly bites out of your parietal lobe, too.
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Rebecca Fishbein
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