Insect Repellent

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Basics

  • Chemicals / Mixtures of them that repel insects
  • Mosquitoes and Ticks are the main insects of concern due to them being major disease vectors ( Malaria , Lyme Disease , and Zika Virus etc in the effected regions
  • This page will go over personal sprays, applications to Mosquito Netting and so on, broad area pesticides are another category and short of as needed in an Integrated Pest Management perspective shouldn’t really be used

Notes on Effectiveness

  • There are many factors at play:
    • How many of the various insects in the area at the time
    • Wind (Mosquitoes cannot fly that well / do the “space station docking type maneuvers” in wind or by a fan as well
    • Some people are more targeted by mosquitoes etc (add in the interesting research here later)
    • Active Ingredient Concentration, if any enhancing non-active ingredients are used, how the repellent is used/applied etc
  • This can lead to confirmation bias or on the other hand valid products or active ingredients not working.
  • Scientific Testing can be done, essentially Disease Free Mosquitoes are bred in a lab, you put your arm in a bag of them, or go inside a screen room (almost like a butterfly garden), and bites are counted.
    • Dual Use risk, but not that hard to set up which may be interesting

User Erics Digging Notes:

  • Permethrin
  • Citriodiol / Oleoresin of Lemon Eucalyptus (/ Lemon Gumtree whatever it is called)
  • add more later

“Thermacell” and similar Thermal Vaporizer Type Units

  • Effectiveness varies, especially based off of wind
  • Butane and Electric Available
    • Propane and Probably DME cannot be swapped in directly re Butane vs Propane
      • Main thing is pressures if I remember correctly
  • The Liquid CAN however be replaced
    • The butane powered devices use “pads”, need to look into if these are just oil-active ingredient mixture soaked, or if it is some solid precursor
    • The electric ones Basically use the same (disposable cartridge) “reservoir + wick + electric heater” setup as any plug in scent diffuser and all that
      • This is especially intriguing as one could use up a cartridge (and potentially rinse it out with solvent) then fill it with a custom active ingredient-solvent and/or oil mixture

Citronella Oil / Citronella Candles etc

  • Not that effective, especially if only one is used
  • Looking into if “burnup” of the active ingredients is an issue may be interesting; could use a Scented Wax Melter type thing to control for flame/temp difference

Mosquito Coils

  • Similar issues to Citronella Candles, also look into Ash Content and all that
  • Along with “Persian Powder” some of them do have the interesting (from an Appropriate Materials perspective) aspect that they are made from powdered Chrysanthemums
    • These do have the issue of being toxic to Cats and such
    • Add the Active Ingredient(s) here later

Cloves

Ingredients:

  1. Alcohol: 1/2 liter
  2. Dried cloves: 10 g
  3. Body oil (almond for instance): 100 ml

Preparation:

  1. Mix alcohol and dried cloves on a bottle. Shake well and leave it closed for 4 days
  2. Run through a sieve to remove the cloves
  3. Put the liquid on a squirt bottle and add the body oil
  4. Shake well

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