Science Marches On: Now We Know How DEET Works

It's still a couple months before the mosquitoes show up for the great camper buffet here at Lake Herman. But with spring fever pumping through my veins, I'm thinking ahead to those glorious summer evenings when I'll be keeping the skeeters away by either moving very fast (I don't get bit on the bike!) or arming (and legging?) myself with DEET.

I am thus amused to read an article this morning that says we've been using DEET for 50 years without really understanding how it works (kind of like gravity). We know it stinks, it eats plastic, and its not good for babies and puppies, but we don't know exactly how it keeps us from getting bit.

Or we didn't until yesterday. Scientists announced yesterday that they've figured out that DEET doesn't so much repel mosquitoes as keep them from finding us. Mosquitoes track us down by smell: they sense our body odor and our personal CO2 emissions. The smell of DEET masks our body odor. Mosquitoes can still pick up the CO2 we exhale, but there are lots of sources of CO2. DEET hides our BO and thus hides us from the bloodsuckers.

So why can't an extra splash of Old Spice get the job done? Surely the aftershave and deodorant companies will take this new nugget of scientific knowledge and start working on that very question.