Surfactants safely take down mosquitoes without using insecticides
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
This is in contrast to insecticides, whose mechanism of action is toxological: they can act on a bug's nervous system.
One is soap, the other is toxin.
What this means is that soaps (surfactants) are much, much safer for the environment because they can be effectively diluted, unlike toxins which can be lethal to intersects even in minute amounts.
So yeah, if some of the soap gets on a bumblebee it might die, but you're not going to get a "one drop of this got in a hive and now everything is dead" effect.
Bleach on the other hand loses effectiveness quickly.
Anyway, I'm not saying that's the way it should be, just the way it is. Selecting for compounds that don't kill eukaryotes is one of the ways you get your product on the market.
I still chuckle every time i think about it, in a defeated, consigned to doom sort of way.
Mosquito control has been moving towards using bacteria [2] which is safe and effective at killing mosquito larva. I'd actually be pretty concerned about putting a surfactants in the water. There's no telling how that will affect local fauna or non-targeted creatures.
Consider the damage of an oil spill/leak.
[1] https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/nature-an...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/bti-mosquito-control
The thing is with the numbers and speed with which insects breed, evolution becomes pretty fast.
But drainage ditches are man-made and subject to pooling and stagnation.
Literally the definition of soap. All they were missing was describing it as a chain with each end attracting the other property.
If these surfactants cause harm to other insects, it would be safe to classify them as insecticides themselves. Then you've just got a new type of insecticide, and need to demonstrate (a) precision, (b) recall, and (c) cost-effectiveness vs. all the other existing insecticides.
Surfactants attack the waxy layer that insects use to breathe, they’ve been very effective at killing them for a long time. The classic fruit fly trap of soap in vinegar uses this effect.
There’s a lot of soaps with a long history of being used in the environment, but like they do have a mechanical effect. Probably not great to douse plants with them.
The biggest challenge I see is they’re not really persistent like permethrin — you need to spray the mosquitoes with the surfactant. That limits application as people will complain about like a fogger truck that makes them a little soapy.
You can't really "develop a resistance" to something that is fundamental to your genetic identity. That's like saying "what if humans developed a resistance to being dunked in vats of acid?"
b) it's just soapy water, we understand soap quite well.
Stop thinking like an administrator and think back to your high school science class.
It’s razor wire for all insects.
There is a wide range of degrees to which surfactants persist in the environment. AIUI, good old SLS degrades quite quickly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, PFOS and PFOA are extremely persistent.
A homemade mix of dish soap and water kills all manner of insects and other arthropods. None of this is new.
I can't remember what happened to my fish, but I think it was out of the picture quickly. My sister's fish was named "Goldie" and, having a scientific mind, I was curious what would happen to the surface tension of the water in there if I dropped a fingernail of soap into it. Well, Goldie immediately said "feeding time!" and gulped down the soap. I snuck away, and eventually heard my sister cry "Goldie's Dead?!" from our room, and I think I eventually had to 'fess up.
For (b) and (c), it probably also has some effect on plants it lands on.
Carefully, at night, with red light just to be sure.
They are the most aggressive pests I’ve ever had the misfortune to run across, if you kill one, you get attacked instantly, and they will chase you, if it was a large active nest, I’d be very cautious.
DC current, just high enough to render em flightless and apart from the human in the room, no extra attractant is needed.
When used indoors?
I don't want mosquitoes but I also want my yard to not be a permanent soapy mess.
And what would happen to a lawn?
Besides, they don't seem like exactly "environmentally friendly":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfactant#Safety_and_environm...
Well if we have a permanent sprinkler dispensing some kind of detergent, how will it _not_ build up?
You have to physically hit the bugs with it, so it has to be going all the time or it has to already have covered whatever the bugs will touch. Either way it's just a mess, right?
Misting systems are already used to control mosquitoes in yards if that's your goal. Misting surfactant instead of permethrin is not that difficult.
It isn't going to be a soapy mess. I make my own ultrasonic cleaning solutions, and mix triton-x (a super-common surfactant) into things. At a much higher concentration than they are talking about here (1%). It is not really that bubbly at this concentration.
They are using DOSS and a few others.
The units they use (millimolars) are annoying to convert, but assuming i'm doing the math right, you are talking about about 1.5grams per liter of surfactant.
(DOSS is 444.5583grams/mol. So we have 444.5583grams/mol * 3millimol = 1.3336749 g per liter)
This will not make a soapy mess with any surfactant they are using.
It would mist just fine.
The hot soapy water washes away the structue of the nest, and quickly kills the inhabitants, whilst not damaging my lawn, or having slow acting insecticides hurting my animals and getting into the wider food chain.
Mosquitos are most active at dawn and dusk when people are usually out farming or just hanging out. Mosquito nets and mosquito repellent works well indoor.
Either you wipe out mosquitos species that cause malaria and dengue, or create vaccines and better drugs. Anything less than that is not going to be much effective. Personally I am against wiping out any species. The planet doesnt belong to us only.
Due to the coronavirus i got into making my own IPA sanitizer spray with mint extract (careful, it can kill you, it's basically concentrated aspirin). 65-70% IPA by volume and 30-40 droplets of mint extract. Since i only sanitize my hands once or twice a day anymore i mostly use the spray for flying insects and roaches that manage to get past my cats.
Neither of those contains any acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) as far as I know / can research.
To the best of my recollection, the "aspirin" part was comparing what a high dosage/overdose was like. I apologize for making the inference that it was "like" aspirin.
All i can find now is that menthol is potentially the dangerous part in concentrated mint oils - however i don't remember menthol being mentioned. I'm also used to claims of "misremembering" details from a half decade or more ago, and have since began screenshotting webpages with potentially controversial information, as well as saving and organizing all pdfs for studies i read, that are linked from news articles or social media. Hopefully situations like this one occur less frequently!