I have tried some of those other insecticides and some of them work well and don't have deet in them.
As for as the girly man comment, I must admit that I am not Arnold. But most of America could say that about themselves. Arnold is one of a kind! LOL But one bite from a West Nile Infected Mosquito could take Arnold down in a flash. The mosquito has killed more humans than anything else in this world. That tiny insect has killed millions of humans by transmitting to them the deadly diseases such a dingy fever, Yellow fever, Malaria and a few more that I can't spell.
Last night I cleaned some nice crappie on my back deck. Normally the mosquitoes will come out in hoards when I spend anytime on my back deck.
There is a drain right below the SW corner of the deck that leads from the deck to the back yard. This 4" corrugated drain has it's mouth set into concrete and the downspout has another 4" corrugated black plastic pipe connected to the end of the downspout. I routed this 4" pipe under the deck from one end to the other. The open end spills it's water into the mouth of the concreted in pipe. All this water goes underground to a buried 8" diameter drainage pipe. This 8" pipe goes all the way though my back yard and then under my neighbor's back yards before spilling into a county drainage system with huge 36" culvert pipes. Eventually the water flows into a small drainage ditch.
Mosquitoes have access to this drainage system at many points. And the corrugated nature of the pipe means that there is always some standing water inside the pipe.
I went into this detail so show you why there is always a bunch of mosquitoes around my back deck. It's been like this since I built the drainage system.
Anyway I dropped a Pre-Strike Tablet (180 control) into the downspout at the SE end of my house. This tablet should put some larvacide into the drainage system and keep the mosquito population down for the next 180 days. If it works.
Last night while cleaning the fish I noticed one mosquito who kept away from the ThermaCELL which I had tied to the deck next to where I was cleaning fish. I didn't get one mosquito bite.
Gimmick, Well the jury is still out. I'll do more research and find out what chemicals the ThermaCELL pads are using. Each little pad coated with insecticide is suppose to work for about 4 hours. You get three pads with the unit. And one Butane canister which is suppose to last for 12 hours. The color of the pad turns from blue to white when all the insectice is used up. You can actually see the insecticide fumes coming off the pad as it's being heated up by the burning butane. I am going to keep on using this thing this year while fishing or cleaning fish on the back deck. It works for me!
I went to Walmart and purchased the Holder or carrying case for my ThermaCELL unit. Now I can tie the ThermaCELL unit around a small tree and or anything else to keep it in place. I could tie it to the pedestal seat on my bass boat and keep it right under my seat for night fishing.
Deet is OK and it's a proven repellent. But I wonder what in the DEET? If it works so good at keeping the mosquitoes away then what will it do when it's soaks into my skin? The smell of DEET does not bother me as much as the smell of the other insecticide that I used.
Lemon Eucalyptus is what I can't stand the smell of. That's what gave me the problems with my nasal passages. It gave me a bloody nose just smelling that stuff. But I have problems with my right airways for a long time.
The lemon Eucalyptus plant based insect repellent works great but it will make you sick if you breath too much of that stuff. At least it make me sick.
I have tried another insect repellent that works pretty good and does not smell so bad. It's the New! OFF! Botanical plant base repellent. It's active ingredient is p-Methane-3,8-diol* at 10%/. I have used this Off with success on mosquitoes. I don't think it would repel ticks though. I could be wrong. For ticks I would use something with a lot of DEET in it and spray my socks and pant legs and shirt sleeve with the Deet.
Cutter Advanced is another one that I have tried. It main active ingredient is the Picaridin at 7%. Picaridin works pretty good on Mosquitoes but not so good on ticks. It does not smell so bad either.
Now the best and most reliable insect repellent for ticks and mosquitoes is something with Deet in it. But you have to spray this directly on your skin or clothing for it to work. You get a very high concentration of this stuff directly onto your skin. You skin is a semi permeable membrane in which chemicals can pass though and into your body. They say that we are what we eat. Well we are also what we spray onto our skin. BTW the skin is the LARGEST ORGAN of the human body. That's right the human skin is an ORGAN. Just like the Liver or the Heart or the Spleen. We absorb a lot of things though our skin. And maybe just maybe it's not always the sunlight's UV rays that produced skin cancer.
I am trying to weight the pros and cons of different insect repellents. West Nile Virus vs Skin Cancer? What a choice we have to make.
I know some guys who would not be called "Girly Men". But they are all dead now. The guy that did the "I walk a mile for a Camel Cigarette commercial. He's died of lung cancer. The actor Steve Mc-Queen who died of a cancer that's associated with Asbestos... [FONT=Arial][COLOR=#303030]Mesothelioma.[/COLOR][/FONT]
Guess I would rather still be alive than be a so called tough guy who dies early. There is nothing wrong with trying to protect your health. Get sick and see how much it helps being a tough guy. Tough guys like to chew but those are the same guys that loose parts of their mouth and throats due to cancer of the mouth. Tough guys like to think that smoking is not harmful but they are the guys that die early of lung cancer.
One of my former neighbor hood kids just died the other day of LUNG CANCER. He was a tough guy too. Not anymore. Now he is DEAD! He can't even fight of the worms and fungi that's already eating his flesh. So much for those tough guys ... hey!
Originally Posted by idbefishing
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