Hazards of Chemical-Based Mosquito Repellents

Around the world, millions of people make use of chemical-based mosquito repellents to get complete protection from mosquito bites. But the most common insect repellents and bug sprays used in several homes may be poisonous and are able to produce health problems in people especially for the children. They also pose many adverse effects to the life of pets along with the destruction of ecological balance of the nature. Even if the chemical ingredients present in these chemical-based mosquito repellents can effectively kill the mosquitoes in your home and locality, it can seriously harm your domestic animals, fishes and even plants.

To the chemicals in the environment, individuals have different tolerances. In the case of insect repellents, children are the most vulnerable group. With the exposure to chemicals, young children are susceptible to change in their brain chemistry. This is because of the fact that the skin of children tends to absorbs more chemicals. In addition, this can harshly result in impaired growth; and affect the development of the nervous system.

Some chemicals are even known to bring about genetic damage to animals along with the enumerable toxic issues that have been listed in human. Prolonged skin exposure to these chemicals produce skin allergies, eye irritations, redness, skin discoloration and inflammation. Constant and heavy exposure to chemical repellents can also cause breathlessness, constant fatigue, muscle and joint pain, generalized physical weakness, memory loss and persistent headaches. People typically develop tremors and shortness of breath when overexposed to the strong chemicals in these repellents.

DEET is a registered chemical ingredient that forms the active component of every chemical-based mosquito repellents. Chemical repellents that include DEET when applied on the topical areas easily penetrate into the skin to our blood stream and cause adverse health hazards on our central nervous system. DEET is also easily absorbed by the human’s gut to cause further more health hazards. Permithrin is another chemical that when combined with DEET can cause chronic memory dysfunction and motor deficits. Some DEET repellents also contain toxic chemical substances like isopropyl alcohol and ethyl that are highly harmful for children.

There are lots of botanical and natural mosquito repellents available in the market today that are effective in warding off mosquitoes without causing any health hazards. You can try out some natural repellents prepared with essential oils like citronella, eucalyptus, lavender, lemon, etc other than going for harmful chemical-based mosquito repellents.