Focus on Health: How to keep mosquitoes at bay

`Tis the season for hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill. It's tough to enjoy the outdoors, though, when mosquitoes make it seem like you're the one on the menu. Well an effective repellent can change that.

It's the female mosquito that puts a bite into your outdoor activities.  She needs a blood meal to produce eggs. Consumer Reports had an outside lab test 10 repellents and here are the top six. OFF Deep Woods Sportsmen II ranked highest and contains 30–percent DEET. Natrapel 8 came in 6th and contains picaridin which is an alternative to DEET.

A word about DEET. The E-P-A judges DEET to be safe when used as directed and the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using repellents with more than 30–percent DEET on any children.  All six repellents kept mosquitoes at bay for at least 7 hours. The main difference between them was cost.  OFF Deep Woods Sportsmen II was the least expensive.  Regardless of the brand it's recommended that you wash the repellent off your skin and launder treated clothing.

Now, if you've ever felt like a mosquito went out of its way to bite you it may have. It seems that mosquitoes have discriminating pallets.  Did you know...that mosquitoes prefer children to adults; women to men; blondes to brunettes; people who have smelly feet and women who are ovulating?  They also bite 500 more times often during a full moon.