I have extensive experience with skin-applied repellents working in pesticides, in addition to various other pesticide products labeled to kill/repel ticks, mosquitoes, etc. I generally avoid talking about work, but avoiding tick-borne illness (and other maladies transmitted by pests) is really important and I feel for the folks on here who have been affected by those illnesses.
I would (personally) avoid the "unregistered" types of products sold with claims against ticks, etc. (such as the plastic, phone cord bracelets that contain "natural" ingredients, or devices that supposedly repel pests via electromagnetic or acoustic sound) and stick with registered, skin-applied repellents containing either DEET or picaridin for the bulk of your tick-prevention plan. Registered pesticides making claims against public health species (like ticks) are required to submit pretty substantial efficacy data which support claims on the labels (i.e., a pesticide registered with claims of "repels ticks" has to have scientifically valid data demonstrating that it actually does repel ticks).
Permethrin-treated articles (like pants), another registered pesticide, are another tool in the toolbox. Those actually tend to work better for things like ticks than they do for flying critters (e.g., black flies, mosquitoes), as ticks often have to crawl up the garment to find an attachment point and are therefore exposed to more of the pesticide by doing so before they can bite you. Permethrin is a synthetic 'pyrethroid' which affects the nervous system, usually killing and/or disorienting affected pests when the pest is exposed to a sufficient amount of the material. While it doesn't repel in the way most people think of repellency, it can provide protection via direct mortality and/or sublethal affects.
All of the other suggestions are great -- I just wanted to double-down on the skin-applied repellents portion just to reiterate how important that is as a preventative measure.
(And yes, DEET will somewhat damage plastics, most notably the rubber straps on my g-shock wrist watches -- I consider this in the overall risk/benefit decision)
TB
On Monday, July 17, 2017 at 8:58:49 AM UTC-4, Charlie Church wrote:
On Monday, July 17, 2017 at 8:58:49 AM UTC-4, Charlie Church wrote:
Carl,
I used DEET pretty much religiously while working in Alaska. My fly lines were fine but also, I was pretty careful about where I sprayed it.
http://www.tpfr.org
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