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Insect repellents for Leeches

To: "birding-aus (E-mail)" <>
Subject: Insect repellents for Leeches
From: Carl Clifford <>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:58:02 +1000
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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