Clothing Can Be Treated To Repel Disease-Carrying Ticks

Ticks are frightening creatures, as they become more threatening to people with each passing year. It seems like once early summer arrives, bad news about the year’s tick populations will frequently be reported in the newspapers. For example, this year, researchers believe that an entirely new, nonnative tick species has made it into the United States. To make this bleak news even worse, the new tick species is capable of reproducing without a mate by means of cloning. This news has already been made public, and Memorial Day has not even occured yet. There are probably many more tick-related news stories waiting to be told this summer, most of which are negative. However, one tick study has demonstrated how tick-borne diseases may be reduced in the American population. The secret to avoiding tick bites happens to be insecticide-treated clothes, and it works according to scientists.

A new study that was conducted by the US Government has demonstrated that insecticide-treated clothing is actually effective at repelling ticks in the wild. Researchers in charge of the study subjected many different materials and brands to the laboratory tests. For example, lab tests show that clothing created by one particular manufacturer successfully causes ticks to involuntarily fall from people’s clothes. In cases when the ticks do not fall from people’s clothes, the treated fabric prevented ticks from biting.

This recent study involved three different tick species, each one capable of spreading several different diseases, such as Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and what’s known as southern tick-associated rash illness, or STARI. The clothes that were used in the study had been pretreated with permethrin, which is a synthetic insecticide derived from the chrysanthemum flower. Several clothing companies already advertise their clothes as being tick-resistant, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the use of permethrin as a tactic to avoid tick bites.

Do you live in an area where tick-resistant clothes are necessary? Are you interested in owning different types of tick-resistant clothing?