Dear All,
I have just returned from 10 weeks in Peninsular Malaysia and
Malaysian Borneo. During that time I trialled 2 insect repellents for
their effectiveness against leeches. One repellent was Bushman
containing 20% DEET, the other Off! Skintastic containing 92.8 g/L
Picaridin. I found that both repellants were equally effective in
repelling Leeches, though the Off! Skintastic did no have as long an
effective life under conditions of high humudity. Under these
conditions I perspired profusely and had to re-apply the Off!
Skintastic every 2-3 hours to my skin.. It had a much longer period
of effectiveness on clothing and footwear. The location I visited
included leech hot-spots such as Danum Valley, Fraser's Hill and
Tanum Negara.
I not only relied on the Leeches finding me, at each location I
caught Leeches, both the terrestrial and Tiger and placed them on
treated skin, footwear and clothing. These leeches tried to leave the
treated areas very rapidly.
During the 10 weeks, I suffered 11 Leech bites, all of these being on
untreated areas of skin. I did not use Leech socks and wore shorts at
all times, often with sandals.
It seems that Picaridin based insect repellents are a good
alternative to DEET based ones in situations where there is a risk of
the repellent coming into contact with materials such as plastics and
synthetic fibres. I saw what DEET can do to some materials at one
location. I rested my foot on a painted wooden rail while applying
Bushman one day, the next day the paint on the rail that had received
some over-spray had started to bubble an lift away from the wood
where the spray had hit it.
No Leeches were intentionally harmed during these trials.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
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www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
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