Reducing tick density along recreational trails in Ottawa, Canada
sciencedirect.com
sciencedirect.com
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin - see other animals, I can never get anchor links to copy on mobile.
Ive been treating my car, hiking clothing and gear with permethrin and haven't had a tick since doing that. Reapply every time you go to the woods or every two weeks if you're in the woods continuously and keep the concentration up.
If my house was in the woods I would also treat the den/mud room.
If you have a rodent problem then control the rodents: manage habitat, trap/kill them, encourage predators like hawks etc.
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
Dedicated summer clothes in trad fabrics are a ton less durable than their winter counterparts, though, for the simple reason that they’re much lighter-constructed. Individual pieces can be had plenty cheap if you bargain-hunt and shop used, but you cycle through more of them than, say, heavy-weight denim or a hefty tweed. Still, mine usually last a few years. Cycling them out seasonally means they don’t wear as fast as some synthetic-blend shirt you wear year-round, so you may not get more wears out of them, but they last a good long while in calendar time.
But man, do they breathe better than just about any of the fancy “tech” fabrics. And feel nicer. Durability, though, is an issue, and you have to get the fit closer to correct than many shoppers may be used to, because most of them won’t have much stretch (no cheating by blending in some nylon or whatever, like a “tech” fabric would)
The wrinkles are a bit of the charm I think, might be easier to accept if you make it part of the fashion instead of fighting it.
I have been washing for years now with tap cold water since learning that and it seems to work fine, even in winter.
A friend replied with the news that cold would work for just about everything, and I haven’t used warm or hot water since then (maybe once with some really dirty jeans and towels). Such a great hack.
I would gladly kill every tick on Earth and whatever relies on eating them so no human has to lose a kid to this again.
The interplay between different components in natural environments is impossibly complex and we basically always get this wrong. Modern LLMs might be able to surface some likely effects of altering a habitat, but it's also very dependent on humans having already studied it in some capacity, there could be new or subtle second-order (and beyond) effects that we just aren't aware of and AI doesn't have the raw data to infer correctly.
But that's not what the previous poster was talking about. This is not the basis of a food web, that's just a parasitic cul de sac. And there are basically infinite such things in nature.
Got Lyme disease from a tick years ago and it was very visible -> a spreading red bruise with a white middle (it get bigger and looks like it's not healing) When spotted some antibiotics did their jobs in two weeks if I remember correctly. I should check the other diseases' visual clues too.
The best is to never get bitten at all.
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2009/09/occupatio...
The first study is talking about constant occupational exposure. By people not wearing basic PPE, over the course of many many years. It's like taking a shower in permethrin every day for 30 minutes. You can pretty much substitute lots of every day things that get absorbed by skin for "permethrin" here and it would cause some very serious symptoms.
The second study used 34mg/kg of permethrin. That is an insane amount, and one that you could not even likely get without intentional ingestion of concentrated powder form.
If you weight 150lbs, that is 2300mg. So a huge horse sized pill of permethrin, every day, will cause issues.
Shocking.
2300mg a day of most substances will cause issues.
Hell, 2300mg a day of most things will cause serious issues faster than permethrin
2300mg of vitamin b3 would destroy your liver very quickly (weeks/months).
2300mg of vitamin b6 would cause permanent nerve damage very quickly (weeks/months)
etc
The reason we don't classify all pesticides as equally dangerous is because they are not all equally dangerous.
Lumping them all together and painting them with a single brush is as unhelpful here as it is when it is done in any other context.
Permethrin is just a synthetic version of pyrethrin, which is extracted from chrysanthemums.
It is probably one of the least harmful substances you will ever be around.
Lyme disease is easily a much greater threat to people than exposure to permethrin and derivatives while hiking.
The exposure to wood dust and other small particles from disturbing the wood chips is probably a greater threat than the permethrin.
I generally wear pants, full sleeve shirts, long socks etc whenever I go hiking but have still found ticks on me later on. Or do you mean something else by PPE?
Permethrin is not well absorbed through skin anyway (0.5-1%). But easily absorbed by breathing it.
Your second link speaks of animal studies, using 34mg/kg of body weight in very young animals (rats) between 6 and 21 days old. Animal studies are valuable, but it doesn't mean you carry the same risk of rats. I'm not sure most folks are going to get that much exposure while walking along trails - for me, personally, it would take 1870mg of repeated exposure. I understand that it would take less exposure for children, but an average newborn is around 3kg and the newborns aren't walking along trails - and in most circumstances, neither are their parents. Especially the mother, who just recently gave birth.
It isn't that I'm saying that pesticide exposure is always healthy or anything, but the type of study and the doses are important to give perspective.
There's alpha gal (red meat allergy ) and also ascending paralysis. And more.
There's several common beneficial nematode species, selection is based on factors such as their affinity for your intended pest, "cruising depth" in soil, and the current soil temperature.
I see several sources specifically recommending a mix of the Steinernema feltiae (Sf) and Heterorhabditis bacteriophora (Hb) beneficial nematode species for tick control applications. Live organisms are shipped with ice packs and typically must be kept refrigerated and applied within a 1 month window.
Application is typically performed with a garden hose and a mixing applicator attachment. Nematodes are sensitive to sunlight, application is typically best performed in the evening to allow them time get underground.
One US vendor in this space I'm familiar with (no affiliation) is Nature's Good Guys. Their product recommendations for tick control are here[2]; they offer applicators as well.
[1] https://progardenreview.com/nematodes-for-tick-control/
[2] https://www.naturesgoodguys.com/collections/tick-control
https://www.naturesgoodguys.com/products/beneficial-nematode...
They are somewhat finicky because they need wet ground but too much rain right after will cause them to runoff instead of soak in.
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
There's a tendency today to attribute everything to climate change, but it should be backed by actual data. It's a sort of attribution bias that to me just feels lazy.
There could be a lot of reasons why ticks might spread. I have lived here 10 years, and haven't noticed an increase or decrease in ticks year over year. Just my anecdata.
> explanations should be backed by data, it's lazy otherwise
> I personally haven't noticed an increase
The relationship between temperature, wetness/humidity, and tick range is extremely well-understood. Altitude is not a relevant variable compared to and controlling for temperature and humidity.
We know under what conditions different tick specie thrive versus die, and we know that as the years go on, there are far more areas under "tick-thriving" conditions for far longer periods, at least for the disease-carrying tick specie that we tend to care about.
No one mentioned anything about climate change except you, reflexively and defensively, for some odd reason.
> No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down.
I wasn't making any causal claims such as this ^
I merely attempted to point out nuance, that mono-causal explanations are lazy and perhaps ignore other factors that might go into the increase of ticks. Ecosystems change for all kinds of reasons, climate change among them.
I didn't make any claims that temperature or moisture doesn't affect tick populations, but maybe there are some other factors at play. For instance, lack of predators for ruminants and rodents, also perhaps human caused, but unrelated to climate.
This thread proves one again that nuance is lost on the internet.
Wolves' impact on the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer has also been studied(2). “CWD prevalence could be halved within a decade and eliminated within the century if a pack of wolves consistently and selectively removed 15% of deer in a closed population” (Waldner, 2016)
I don't know if wolves' impact on tick populations has been explicitly studied, but you can find research on habitat diversity reducing ticks(3); and it follows that the lack of predators contributes to deer population explosion, which in turn provides an unbounded vector for the tick epidemic.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235198942...
2. https://wildlifecoexistence.org/blog/wolves-and-chronic-wast...
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
"Kill all the wolves, die as a result from invisible bacteria carried by tiny arthropods - or from Type 2 diabetic heart failure, as getting out for a hike and staying safe is now too much hassle".
Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
Perhaps their reasons is an economic one (wolf attacks on livestock) and not an human safety one ?
> was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Outside of islands like Britain that only really happened in the 1800s after wolves stopped being a threat anyway. Also interestingly enough in quite a few places in Western Europe more area was deforested and exploited for agriculture between the medieval period and the 20th century than now. That naturally made cohabiting with wolves and bears a bit problematic (now there are way more forests and protected areas, of course this only really applies to Europe not North America)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2870557/
The good news is that there’s a promising new one in the pipeline but Lyme is only one of the diseases which ticks spread:
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
And no, it does not have to be too warm if you use an appropriate light and wicking fabric.
Great, more insecticides :(
Now even in places we least expect them.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/lyme-dise...
Texas has the 'Lone star Tick' primarily. But in Michigan for example we've had the Blacklegged tick (which is the main species known to carry Lyme in our state...) for a looong time.
We do all the best camping in January and February. Why, you might ask, when it's usually colder than -20 C? No ticks. Also no mosquitos, blackflies, or deerflies but mostly no ticks.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
Up and down cycles in temperature have always been a thing on the North American continent but climate change has made it even more variable. We will still get places where it gets very very cold but not for the consistent chunks of time it takes to set back tick populations significantly.
TLDR I don't think it's the heat or cold per se but the variance.
And yes climate change is absolutely the prime factor in their spread. Into places where they were not ever a threat before.
It impacts the population, but even a couple solid weeks of -20C weather doesn't seem to be enough to eradicate them.
Insects lay eggs, and also go dormant under fallen leaves typically. The snow + leaves insulates them, it's how live insects survive the winter.
If you watch robins in the spring, before the ground thaws, you'll see them flipping over leaves. They're eating loads of insects hiding, most still torpid from the cold.
-40C isn't a problem for ticks to live through in this way.
In terms of population, everything follows predator/prey cycles. Nothing is static. It's normal for populations to "explode", eventually predators will grow in numbers too.
I see it with noseeums here, and dragonflies. There are almost no noseeums this year, but loads of dragonflies, which means the dragonfly population will collapse, and soon (couple of years) the noseemums will be relentless. But then the dragonflies will grow in numbers, with plentiful food, and the cycle will repeat.
It's natural.
Global warming may shift habitats, but these ticks are normally here. They're not new.
You might be recalling wind chill temperatures, which would not be relevant here. They're subjective perceived temperatures for hairless apes.
However it does occasionally get to (real) -40C ish in Edmonton area, and they now have populations of blacklegged ticks. But very small populations.
Like I said above, the issue is not the absolute lows or highs, it's durations of cold, which impact their ability to recover and produce large quantities of eggs in the spring. This was literally in an article I was reading about ticks the other day, don't make me hunt for it.
Black legged ticks are not new to Ontario, but they absolutely are to places like central Alberta. And the Lone Star tick is moving north for similar reasons and will be established here in Ontario shortly as well.
I'm also 20 minutes to downtown, outside of rush hour, so I stand by the ease of saying "Ottawa".
No you don't get my address, but temperatures in cities and at airports are warmer than rural areas in winter. Where I live, I'm also higher up by several hundred feet, and it all matters. I don't blame you for checking, but the city of Ottawa encompasses a lot of rural land.
It can rain torrents in part of southern Ottawa, but Ottawa weather stations could remain dry.
My point about snow and leaves, is that if there is snow cover, they're completely happy, insulated, nestled in the leaves.
I don't doubt you read an article, and from a reputable source, I just don't buy their assertions. Lack of snow cover would be a bigger predictor than overall temp.
I know this because I farm and grow grapes and have meticulously poured over weather charts for the whole province. (Survival cut off for hybrid and wild grapes is really around -32C or so. Vinifera... maybe -20C)
I think you believe temperatures are far more homogeneous than they are. On my way home, 500M of road over a hill makes 35C turn into 31C.
And no, weather stations aren't everywhere. I think the nearest one is 20km away.
Ticks in my part of the world were never such a large problem. It was rare that you'd get one on your leg in the field behind our house, and now, you literally can't walk through the grass each year without having 10+ on your legs in a matter of minutes. Warmer and wetter weather and fewer hard winters. The presence of Lyme disease has also increased in them.
I have direct experience of this, so downvote all you want, climate change deniers.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle).
In any case, lack of long consistent extended cold spells in the winter to set back their breeding population is the reason they've moving further north. Which is tied directly to climate change.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle)."
Yep, we should extend the deer hunting seasons so we can vaccinate 'em with lead (I'll leave the rat hunting to others).
This is key paragraph from the link:
> The effects of vaccination on human behaviour presented yet another important uncertainty. Lyme vaccination, although it provides incomplete protection, may make individuals less likely to limit their exposure to ticks, which might actually increase their risk of Lyme and other tick-borne diseases (e.g. ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever).
That was a very half-assed attempt. Hopefully a better one is coming soon.
The "cautionary" part of the cautionary tale referred to in the article title is that a working vaccine was retracted mainly due to unfounded fears
e.g from the article summary "Just 3 years later, the manufacturer voluntarily withdrew its product from the market amidst media coverage, fears of vaccine side-effects, and declining sales. This paper reviews these events in detail and focuses on the public communication of risks and benefits of the Lyme vaccine and important lessons learned."
The "public communication of risks" not the actual risks.
Isn't it more because meds are cheaper to test on animals and liability is much lower?
But prions were the cause, and those are slow acting.
The new, safer vaccine is only recommended if you're going to Japan or surrounding areas, and planning to going outside the city.
Humans generally aren't vaccinated for Rabies either, unless you are e.g. a veterinarian who might have a higher chance of exposure to it.
Just like with syphillis, there is a cheap and simple cure that is more effective than any known vaccine. If it's caught in time. Prevention is even cheaper.
The standard treatment for Lyme also just happens to be the standard treatment for many of the other tick-borne diseases, so you're still better-off taking a course of doxycycline after a tick byte than getting a vaccination against Lyme.
There are also common coinfections which are grouped under the same name, despite being unique.
I assume a vaccine would try to be multivalent.