Fight the Bite: Clothing and Clothing Treatments to Reduce Vector Bites

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- Being outside and enjoying nature is wonderful, and we want to maximize our time outdoors.

However, sometimes that means sharing the outdoors with ticks and mosquitoes.

So how can you prepare to reduce your risk of bites?

The first thing you should do is conduct a risk assessment for your exposure to ticks and mosquitoes.

This is as simple as knowing if you will be in a risky or safer habitat.

After that, you can prepare to reduce bites with specific clothing choices.

Wearing light-colored clothing such as tan or white, will allow you to see ticks more clearly.

Long pants and sleeves that cover bare skin may reduce mosquito bites and will help keep ticks on the outside of your clothing.

Lightweight or sports fabrics have the added benefit of wicking moisture away, as well as giving some additional UV protection.

Hats can also be helpful to keep mosquitoes and ticks from biting your exposed head and hairline.

Pull your socks over your pants and tuck your shirt into your waistband to reduce areas where ticks can find bare skin.

Some folks are not happy with this particular look or with hiking in 90-degree weather with long pants, but remember, these are just tools.

Your risk assessment will inform you of the measures you need to take, and your personal preferences can help guide which of these tools you prefer to use.

Keep in mind that the more you can use, the better protected you'll be.

Another option to prevent bites is treating clothes with permethrin.

Permethrin is a synthetic version of a natural compound derived from a chrysanthemum plant.

You can treat pants, socks, shirts, and even shoes with permethrin.

When clothes are treated with a specific formulation of permethrin meant for fabric, the chemical binds to the fibers and acts as a toxicant and repellent to both ticks and mosquitoes.

Here you can see how ticks respond to treated fabric.

The pant legs on the left are not treated with permethrin and the pant legs on your right have been treated.

If you can rewind the video and you'll notice how quickly ticks react to the treated fabric, another commercially available product are tick gaiters shown here.

These take the place of tucking your pants into your socks.

Your clothing choices when you go outside can impact your risk of tick and mosquito bites.

Wearing long pants and sleeves, tucking your clothes in, and using treated clothing can help keep you safer.

The best thing you can do is use as many of these methods as possible to reduce your risk of mosquito and tick bites and potential vector-borne diseases.