Keeping your backyard barbecue free of mosquitoes is possible, Elizabeth Tracey reports
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Mosquitoes aren’t just a nuisance, they transmit disease. So when you bring everyone over for a backyard barbeque keeping them away is a priority. Johns Hopkins mosquito expert Christopher Potter says if you’d rather not pass out the bug spray there are other products that are quite effective.
Potter: There's a class of spatial repellents that are also insecticides that work pretty well. It's these pyrethroid classes like transfluthrin, permethrin, and you can buy them. As it heats it up basically to get it out into the air, that's pretty effective because it’s an insecticide so if it's the mosquito comes in contact with it it will die. And also they don't like the odor of it as well so it kind of keeps them away. So that one's pretty good for the backyard barbecues otherwise you need to use like a spatial repellant oil of lemon eucalyptus that's like a lemony odor to it so it smells actually pretty good. :32
Potter notes that many of the lotions and sprays that are applied to the skin may also smell pretty good to humans, even though they’re noxious to mosquitoes. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
