Explore ways to protect yourself and your family by using repellent, clothing with repellents built-in, and simple, yet effective, daily tick checks.
Seasonal Tip for Mid-Summer
Keep tiny ticks from crawling through your socks! Find out how…
Tick-repellent clothing
Tick-repellent clothing is an important newer way to help keep children and camp staff protected from biting ticks while enjoying outdoor adventures at summer camp. The technology for permethrin-treated clothing has actually been around for 3 decades and was developed first for the military. but is now available to everyone.
Always wear clothing pre-treated with an effective tick repellent to make tick-bite prevention easy. And for peace of mind while kids are away at summer camp, why not make all of their clothes treated clothes. The protection is odorless, invisible, and when done commercially, can last through 70 washes. Insect Shield in Greensboro, NC is a leader in the field of repellent clothing – safe and effective, it’s the tick repellent you and your whole family will love to wear!
Buy pre-treated clothing or use Insect Shield’s repellent clothing treatment service to have your own favorite outdoor wear treated!
Buy Pretreated clothesTreat your own clothes
Shoe and clothing-only spray repellents
Repellents play an integral part in your personal protection strategy. Repellents containing DEET are not sufficient to protect against tick bites. If you read the fine print on the label, DEET should only be applied to exposed skin. When freshly applied, it certainly can repel some ticks but there’s also the possibility that it repels ticks to areas underneath clothing where they could bite. Deet’s protection is also fairly short-lived against ticks. By contrast, permethrin kills ticks on contact. Clothing-only repellents that contain permethrin are very effective and provide long-lasting protection. The best protection you can achieve is by using a repellent that contains permethrin on your clothes and one that contains DEET for your skin.
visit permethrin fact sheet pageTick-protective dress
What you wear when working or playing could reduce your chances of tick bites. Remember: Ticks start low and crawl up; ticks do not jump, fly or drop from trees, they are down on the ground or low shrubs and after latching on, they crawl up until they hit a roadblock, like a skin fold, waistband or other clothing restriction, which then becomes a good spot to attach. Tucking pant legs into socks is a good way to keep ticks on the outside of clothing where they may be seen or get brushed off.
Daily tick checks
The simplest way to protect yourself is to remove a tick before it has a chance to transmit disease-causing pathogens. Ticks can attach anywhere, in particular, they will find spots like: the back of your knee, around waistbands, under armpits or any other constricted place. Anytime after you have been in tick habitat you should thoroughly check your entire body and remove attached ticks immediately. Once attached, ticks do not wash off easily in the shower.
Vaccinations
