Posted on 10/28/2015 12:46:26 PM PDT by Red Badger
Every summer while preparing for long weekends at our family cabin in the north woods of Minnesota, we'd face the same dilemmas. What food should we bring? Is SPF 50 sunscreen enough protection? And, most importantly, which mosquito repellent should we buy? If we picked the wrong kind, we'd be opening ourselves up to evenings of constant swatting by the campfire and nights of uncontrollable itching. Protection from the unofficial state bird, the mosquito, was not something to take lightly.
However, while itchy limbs might be annoying, Minnesotans don't have much to worry about from mosquitoes, except for the occasional case of West Nile virus or a few other less common diseases. In other parts of the country and the world, more devastating mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and chikungunya are present, so protection from mosquitoes can be a matter of life and death. In these places, making the right decision on a mosquito repellent carries more weight than it does in Minnesota.
To help consumers decide which mosquito repellent they should buy, researchers at New Mexico State University tested 10 commercially available products for their effectiveness at repelling mosquitoes, and the results were published in the Journal of Insect Science. Three of the products (Repel 100 Insect Repellent, OFF Deep Woods Insect Repellent VIII, and Cutter Skinsations Insect Repellent) were mosquito repellents that contained DEET as the active ingredient, and four of the products (Cutter Natural Insect Repellent, EcoSmart Organic Insect Repellent, Cutter Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent, and Avon Skin So Soft Bug Guard) were mosquito repellents that did not contain DEET. The other three products tested were Avon Skin So Soft Bath Oil, Victoria's Secret Bombshell perfume, and Mosquito Skin Patch, a skin patch with vitamin B1 as the active ingredient.
The products were tested against two mosquito species, the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), both known vectors of dengue fever, chikungunya, yellow fever, and other diseases.
For both species, the researchers found that mosquitoes were strongly repelled by all products containing DEET. For the other products, they found mixed results.
On Aedes aegypti, the mosquito repellents that did not contain DEET either didn't repel them at all or didn't have a repellent effect after just 30 minutes. The exception was Cutter Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent, which had strong repellent effects for the duration of the 240 minute test. The bath oil and perfume effectively repelled mosquitoes for 120 minutes, but the skin patch did not seem to have any repellent effect at any time.
On Aedes albopictus, two of the non-DEET repellents significantly repelled mosquitoes throughout the duration of the study. Furthermore, unlike the resuts for Aedes aegypti, Avon Skin So Soft Bug Guard had significant repellent effects for 120 minutes. The bath oil and skin patch had no repellent effects on Aedes albopictus, but the perfume repelled mosquitoes for 120 minutes, as it did for Aedes aegypti.
"The results of this study show that not all commercially available mosquito repellents are effective in repelling mosquitoes and that efficacy is also dependent on the species of mosquito that is repelled," the authors wrote. "Overall, the results from this study confirm that DEET repellents are the most effective mosquito repellents in the market. Although, based on the results from this study, a lemon-eucalyptus oil containing p-menthane-3,8-diol (PMD) [the active ingredient in Cutter Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent] has similar efficacy to DEET repellents."
Perhaps the most surprising result in the study was the effectiveness of Victoria's Secret Bombshell perfume at repelling mosquitoes.
"Our results challenge the notion that floral perfume-scented sprays, in general, attract mosquitoes," the authors wrote. "Floral fragrances may provide a masking odor resulting in low mosquito attraction rates, but over a shorter duration of time."
However, the authors do provide a caveat to this finding, noting that "the concentration of perfume we used in this test was rather high and that lower concentrations of the same fragrance might have different effects."
Explore further: A natural, alternative insect repellent to DEET
More information: Stacy D. Rodriguez et al. The Efficacy of Some Commercially Available Insect Repellents for (Diptera: Culicidae) and (Diptera: Culicidae) , Journal of Insect Science (2015). DOI: 10.1093/jisesa/iev125
Most larger species of mosquito are not blood suckers, but plant pollinators.................
I’m in Florida. SPF 50 is weak, we find SPF 100+ commonly................
Whatever is in SOS, it really works. I’d hate to mess with a proven solution. :)
You should be able to hit them with a pellet gun...
I was stationed at Grand Forks also, 78-82. Country boy from Texas who got religion there, found out there really was a hell.
Yeah, I noticed that my nails don’t look anything like that....
My neighbor said it felt like someone was putting a knife in his back. These are called gallinippers and feed on blood.
The unofficial state bird is the mosquito.
The official state bird is the Loon, also known as members of the democrat party.
I could be at the bottom of a swimming pool filled 10 feet deep with 100% DEET wearing a wet suit 3 inches thick covering every square inch of my epidermis and breathing through scuba gear, and I would emerge from the pool covered head to toe in mosquito bites.
Must be a complicated body chemistry thing ...
#3 dryer softener sheets
Getting the mosquitos inside the dryer is the hard part.
Thasssright..... only hateful people trying to spread panic and incite crowds against peace-loving homosexuals would say that.
Never mind that some healthcare professionals working in the Rio Grande Valley with Mexican field hands swore that the AIDS cases they were seeing were occurring among men who weren't intravenous drug users or homosexuals. They were strongly enough suspicious of mosquitoes that one person went so far as to call the little buggers "flying hypodermic syringes". Which they are. And they don't clean up with bleach after every bite.
Turned out in Africa that the major vector wasn't lubricious truck drivers but well-meaning missionary doctors who were re-using hypodermics (for economy). They thought they could clean them up and reuse them. They apparently thought wrong.
I am very allergic to DEET and also to cedar. I got a mosquito shirt from Bug Out.com.. It works great, light mesh shirt with a hood that actually can go over your head and face. sleeves are long enough to protect your hands too.
Permethrin. Take a 32 gallon trash can, fill 2/3 with warm water, add 1 cap full of Permethrin, soak cloths then let dry. Bugs die when they touch the stuff, but no harm to humans. In fact, the military has BDUs impregnated with Permethrin.
Permethrin on clothes and gear along with DEET on skin and bugs are no problemo.
Whoaa, too strong! You only need about 20%-30% for it to work like a champ. And it is a chemical.
Consumer's Reports tested the sprays etc. 15-20 years ago and reached about the same conclusions this article did, except that the Victoria's Secret perfume wasn't out then (notice the high concentration mentioned) and the Skin So Soft was much less effective than anything with DEET, and less effective than the Cutter non-DEET repellent, which worked fairly well. The non-DEET Cutter, in turn, was less effective than Cutter offerings with DEET. Deep Woods OFF was the king of the hill, then as now.
Tansy oil is an ancient and powerful abortifacient used by old crones for centuries to induce miscarriages. It's also toxic. Be careful with that stuff.
We used to have a neighborhood cat that would come to our front porch at night and sleep on our furniture. He would spray the entire porch with his scent, marking his territory. We planted some mint all around the porch in the flower beds and he hasn’t been back since...........
Yes, I've seen those..................
Try the non-DEET Cutter and the lemon-eucalyptus oil if you're allergic to DEET. I still have some non-DEET stuff that I got years ago after I saw the CR article I mentioned a couple of posts back. It worked moderately well. Then I cheated a bit and added a light dusting of DEET stuff. Those Asian Tigers are a PITA .... they'll get you at high noon in August. And the way they breed puts rabbits to shame. Four days flat, from laying to hatchout.
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