• Standard Pest Management

  25-80 Steinway St., nr. 28th Ave., Astoria; 718-728-4040; standardpest.com

  New York’s 2009 pick, Boot a Pest, remains a sought-after bedbug-buster, but another outfit has become a go-to combatant: Standard Pest Management. Its president is Gil Bloom, an entomologist who last year served on the city’s Bed Bug Advisory Board. He’s a regular at bedbug summits, keeping up on cutting-edge methods and, as he puts it, “staying on top of the technical curve.” Multipronged attacks are key, he says, and the newest weapon in his arsenal is known as thermal remediation. The details are complicated, but it amounts to baking an infested space at 135 degrees, nuking the bugs. (It’s especially suited to areas like libraries that can’t be easily emptied.) Standard Pest is also known for quieting frazzled nerves with detailed instructions to prevent reinfestation.

From the 2011 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine