I’m tired of mosquitos biting me. If i can’t stop them biting me, the next best thing is to stop them biting me a second time. So what’s the best (safe for me) way to make myself poisonous to mosquitos, and optionally other bugs that might bite me?
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safe for me
Well that’s no fun :P
The trick is finding a pesticide that the LD50 for mosquitoes is less then humans and take an amount constantly to maintain lethal to mosquito blood levels that isn’t lethal to humans.
If you want more details I can’t help because this idea is really dumb.
What does LD50 even mean?
The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose required to kill half the members of a tested population after a specified test duration
This is, effectively, how oral flee/tick medications work in animals. It basically turns the animal’s blood into a mild poison. The poison is mild enough that it doesn’t affect the animal but it’s enough to kill small insects like flees, ticks, or mosquitoes.
Dose needed to kill half the number of individuals or animals of a species that take it. So if 100 people took this substance, what would be the dose needed to kill 50 of them. Same for mosquitos.
The LD50 is usually expressed as the mass of substance administered per unit mass of test subject, typically as milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass, sometimes also stated as nanograms (suitable for botulinum), micrograms, or grams (suitable for paracetamol) per kilogram. Stating it this way allows the relative toxicity of different substances to be compared and normalizes for the variation in the size of the animals exposed (although toxicity does not always scale simply with body mass).
See, if you hadn’t wanted it to be safe, you could get all kinds of answers.
There really isn’t anything you can get into your bloodstream that will kill the mosquitoes without causing some degree of issues for a human. The only question is how severe, and whether or not you can get it without a prescription.
Since we already have topical chemicals that keep them away relatively well, ingesting or injecting anything would be silly.
Permethrin clothing. Works fucking amazing. I have a jumpsuit treaded with it, kills ticks, mosquitoes, black flies. Not just repel but kill on contact!
Your link is about a medicine/spray. Where are you finding the clothing?
Exoficio has a line of repellent clothing with permethrin. Craghoppers used to, but I think they stopped.
The only drawback is washing wears out the treatment, so you either have to buy new gear or treat it yourself, as the other comment states.
I’ve treated my hunting clothing with permethrin when we were going to an area that was known to have an extremely heavy tick population. We had a spray bottle of the stuff, and did a thick coating all over our outer gear, and then allowed it to dry. Permethrin is fairly low toxicity for humans & dogs, but absolutely killer for mosquitoes and ticks. Worked like a charm!
Army combat uniforms even come pretreated with it.
Permethrin is toxic to cats; however, it has little effect on dogs. Many cats die after being given flea treatments intended for dogs, or by contact with dogs having recently been treated with permethrin. In cats it may induce hyperexcitability, tremors, seizures, and death.
fyi
Thanks for the info. I have 3 cats and I was about to look into this.
That said, prethreated clothing should be fine to have around cats as long as they aren’t actively licking/eating them.
My cats are a bit special so I wouldn’t put it past them.
So there are these things… called “bug repellents” which do the trick nicely.
Diet, people with diabetes are more delicious.
- Keto - changes your blood sugar and hormones probably having the biggest impact
- SPICY food, hot peppers, hot chilies, also have a impact
- Garlic - also repels some bugs
Non-diet interventions
- Sit in front of a fan, or strong wind, mosquitoes can’t fly very hard, so they cannot fight a breeze
- Went outside keep moving, don’t stay still
Keep moving. They target CO2 exhalations.
I was on keto for a while and always the main target for mosquitoes among all my friends.
Ever walk into a room, get overwhelmed with the smell of garlic? And there’s no garlic in the room, just people who eat garlic?
I’m suddenly very self-conscious in a way I’ve never felt before
Pretty sure I just stumbled onto the orgins story for a radioactive super villain.
“Now now, Batman, you should know that when a little pest like you dances with the Bug Zapper… He’d better be ready for a shock!”
Hmm? Did you say something? I was asleep in my recliner…why is one shoe on? Oh right…I was going to that party…zzzzz
I was thinking about the Mosquitoman but since the Swedes call Batman the Läderlappen I’d say we use the Swedish name Mygga and call him Myggaman - drawn to the burning flames of war and he just blasts high pitched sounds from every electric device all night to turn people into rage.
Get one of those bug lights with a sticky pad. Complete desolation of the mosquito population in my house. Then just never leave your house.
Have you tried covering yourself in a uranium based slurry?
Did you just tell OP to piss on themselves?
did you mix up uranium and urine?
I did, and I apologise.
I do three things and mosquitos avoid me: I eat a ton of garlic, I take a ton of drugs, and I smoke a ton of weed. My blood is semisolid.
After I got long covid mosquitos stopped trying to eat me lol.
So maybe sickness helps idk.
DEET is the only chemical that I know-of which they HATE.
I use mosquito-netting to keep them away from me.
I don’t want DEET touching me, at all, ever again.
No, I’m not a mosquito.
: p
When you’re out, use DEET and cover yourself. Try to only apply it to your clothes. It’s toxic to humans. Are you out a lot? If so, I’d be worried about ticks and poisonous plants as well.
If you have control of the land around you, make sure there’s no stagnant water nearby. If you want to keep a pond, manage your mosquito population using local species if possible. In some places, you can also report stagnant bodies of water.
If they’re inside, check your window screens. If you can’t afford that, use a mosquito net and check my first answers.
I think sugar makes you more attractive to mosquitoes. I know from first-hand experience that if you’re always hung over, and you smoke cigarettes, then the city mosquitos will leave you alone. The high country mosquitos don’t give a fuck though, they’ll take whatever they can get. Otherwise you want 97% DEET. Don’t bother with any other stuff, it doesn’t work. 97% DEET! Someone’s going to come along and say “nooo, skin so soft mixed with water repels mosquitoes!”. They’re liars. 97% DEET.
DEET works, but is also not exactly healthy and does irritate both skin and mucus membranes. Also, applying DEET over sunscreen reduces the effect of the sunscreen by about 30%. Unless you are in a tropical environment with dangers of Malaria carrying insects, (P)Icaridin is a good alternative:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25936273/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/icaridin
I never had any success with it. It might work in the cities, and populated areas where the mosquitoes have other easy options, but literally the only thing that has ever worked reliably for me in the mountains is 97% DEET. Even the lesser concentration of it, I think it’s 36%, didn’t work. I’ve tried just about everything trying to get away from DEET, and none of it works reliably. If mosquitoes are bothering me in town it’s usually enough to just wear one of those electric repellers that make dragonfly noises, but I only bother with that if I’m out golfing or something, and they’re not particularly bad there. Wherever they’re out in force, I whip out the DEET. Forewarning though, don’t spray it on polyester because it can melt it, and like you said, keep it away from eyes, nose, and lips. We spray it onto our hand and then wipe it onto our face and ears.
what noise does a dragonfly make?
Purely annecdotally, picaridin has worked as well or better than DEET for me. I barely get bitten when I use it, and I usually get bitten up pretty badly when I use DEET (though less than when I don’t use it)
I also find picaridin bug spray to not feel greasy and has less odor than deet, which is nice.
DEET is also fairly toxic to dogs (and cats, but I don’t have one of those) and while it’s not licensed for use on dogs, it doesn’t appear to be toxic to them, which I appreciate as a dog owner (I’m unsure about cats, that info seemed less readily available but I also didn’t put much effort into finding it)
Not a doctor. Really don’t do/consume anything on the basis of what you hear on Lemmy.
But maybe the bacillus thuringiensis toxin? Bacillus thuringiensis is a bacterium that produces a natural pesticide that I’ve heard (again, not a doctor, don’t take anything I say as medical advice) doesn’t affect vertibrates. But mosquitos aren’t vertibrates. So, (again, not an expert and this may be bullshit) maybe that means it’s safe for humans to use.
But what do I mean by “use”? I’m guessing it might (not a doctor) be safe to use on the skin (if it could be obtained in medical-grade quality – but I’m not an expert).
But I kindof doubt (though I could be wrong) that eating bacillus thurengiensis or the actual toxin would work. The toxin is (I believe, just from reading the bacillus thuringiensis Wikipedia page) a protein, and I don’t think (ɹoʇɔop ɐ ʇou ɯɐ I) consumed proteins are likely to get into the bloodstream. (And if they did, I suspect (though I am not a doctor) that would cause you some problems, or at least an immune response and some inflamation or some such.)
Before consuming Bug Powder Dust, read or watch Naked Lunch to know what you are in for
