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Clothes and Shoes to Fight the Bite

From About.com

Updated: May 10, 2007

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by Susan Olender, MD

Forget About Black Chic: Dark colors attract mosquitoes, so make sure all of your clothing is light colored. Think safari. No colors are known to attract ticks, but light-colored clothing makes it easier to detect ticks crawling up your pant leg.
Smell Neutral: Perfume and other nice smelling substances like after-shave and nice smelling laundry detergent may attract mosquitoes and other bugs, so try to smell neutral and natural.
Cover Up: Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants.

Mosquitoes may be able to take a drink right through your clothes, so avoid tight clothes. Some mosquitoes, such as Aedes aegyptii famous for spreading Dengue fever, are particularly good at flying up underneath pant legs, so you may want to find some pants that have drawstring closure at the ankle, so wear protective socks to protect the area between the pant leg and your shoes.

Ticks crawl up from the ground, so make sure to tuck pant legs into your socks to prevent ticks from crawling up your legs from leaf litter.

Tuck Toes Away: Feet are often overlooked when thinking about insect control. Many people wear sandals in the tropics, but it is a good idea to wear shoes that cover the entire foot when in areas where life-threatening diseases are spread by mosquitoes, ticks, or other insects.

My husband, Dr. Oscar Bernal, works for a humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders and often travels to Africa, Asia and South America and is sometimes the only one to wear shoes instead of sandals. But then again, he's learned his lesson after getting malaria more than a few times.

Spray Repellent on Your Clothes: You can usually apply regular insect repellent approved for use on exposed skin, on your clothes. Just don't put repellent on skin underneath your clothes. Key places to spray are: pant legs, shirt sleeve cuffs and collars. Repellents wash off and wear off, so it needs to be applied before going outside each time.

Warning: DEET may damage synthetic cloth and plastics, like the frames of your glasses, so you may want to either wear natural fibers or switch to a repellent like Picaridin or citronella taking into considerations the limitations of these alternative insect repellents.

Treat Your Clothes with Permethrin: When the risk of mosquito, tick or other insect bites and infectious diseases is high and there in no way to avoid insects, consider wearing clothing treated with the insect repellent, permethrin. You can treat clothing and mosquito nets yourself with permethrin treatment kits. Treatment with permethrin lasts for several washes.
Children and Clothing: Although permethrin is not considered to be toxic to humans in the quantities used for clothing treatment, children should not wear treated clothing unless the risk of mosquito or tick bites exceeds the dangers presented by the treated clothing. Babies should probably not wear permethrin treated clothing since they could ingest permethrin when they suck on their clothes.

Dresses do not offer good protection against mosquitoes, ticks or other insects. Consider bug sprays that contain Picaridin, DEET or citronella as a good option for children when mosquitoes cannot be avoided, but use according to the label.

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Sources:

CDC. Division of Vector Borne Infectious Diseases. West Nile Virus: Updated Information regarding Insect Repellents.

CDC. Division of Vector Borne Infectious Diseases. West Nile Virus: Q and A: Insect Repellent Use and Safety.

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. ToxFAQs: DEET.

AAP. AAP News. Vol. 28. No. 2 Feb. 2007. p. 37.

CDC. Traveler's Health. Yellow Book: Protection Against Mosquitoes and Other Arthropods.

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Permethrin.

AHC Media. Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus as an Insect Repellent.

AAP News. Increasing options for malaria prophylaxis in children. Vol. 28 No. 2 February 2007, p. 37.

EPA. New Pesticide Fact Sheet. Picaridin. May 2005.

North Carolina Entomology Extension Waldvogel, Michael, Apperson, Charles.

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