#Peppermint spray for mice and spiders skin

We also test whether repellents damage materials that repellents are likely to come into contact with, including the polycarbonate of eyeglass lenses, a leather belt, cotton, and polyester.įourteen of our 22 recommended insect repellents use deet as their active ingredient. We currently test repellents only against mosquitoes, but in past years we’ve found that repellents that worked well against mosquitoes also worked well against ticks. Our highest-rated repellents protected for 7 hours or longer our lowest-rated ones lasted 2 hours or less. Our ratings are primarily based on how long a product protected test subjects against two species of mosquitoes. We consider a failure to be two confirmed mosquito bites in one 5-minute session inside the cage, or one confirmed bite in each of two consecutive 5-minute sessions. Half an hour later, this procedure is repeated once, and then again once every hour after that until a repellent fails our test, or until 8 hours have passed since it was applied. That’s to mimic a real-world situation in which users might exercise while wearing repellent. The subjects then walk around for about 10 minutes to stimulate sweating.

#Peppermint spray for mice and spiders skin

Our testers watch closely to see what happens inside the cage, and they count every time a mosquito lands on a subject’s arm, uses its proboscis (its long mouth) to probe the skin in an attempt to find a capillary, or bites the subject’s arm and begins to feed-which the testers can tell by watching for the insect’s abdomen to turn from gray to red or brown.Īfter 5 minutes, the subjects withdraw their arms, then repeat the process by placing their arms into a second pair of cages of disease-free mosquitoes of a different species for another 5 minutes. The standard dose is determined from the Environmental Protection Agency’s product testing guidelines.Īfter 30 minutes, these volunteers then place their arms into the first two of four cages of 200 disease-free mosquitoes for 5 minutes. At our insect repellent testing lab, we begin by applying a standard dose of repellent to a measured area of skin on our test subjects’ arms.