Study Finds Which Soap Brands Attract Mosquitoes and Which Soaps Repel Them
Apparently, I’m a mosquito magnet. I don’t use shampoo because I shave my head, and I use one soap for everything. It just so happens, according to a recent study, that mosquitos are attracted to the one and only soap I slather all over my body on a daily basis.
I was just thinking that with the warm weather now rather consistent and summer just moments away, we’re going to spend a lot more time outside, especially at night. It’s the season for cook-outs, barbeques, or just hanging on the deck with our summertime visitors, mosquitoes. Some people are just naturally more attractive to the pests for whatever reason, but researchers from Virginia Tech now say certain soaps make people much more attractive to the flying menaces who are out for blood.
The scientists chose several different soap brands, tested them on humans, and learned that most of the people who washed with the brand’s Dove or Simple Truth became significantly tastier to a mosquito.
Here’s the good news, they found that if you use a brand that smells like coconut, that helps keep the bugs away. They tested the brand Native which has a coconut scent.
Their findings, which were published in the journal iScience, showed that bug spray didn’t really help those like me who use soaps that attract mosquitoes
Even the folks in the study who used bug spray were still swarmed if they used those brands, say the scientists, whose findings were published in the journal iScience.
They say that they plan more testing to see if time affects their results. They plan to study if the effects wear off throughout the day if someone showers in the morning versus someone who has used the soap recently.
They also hope to learn exactly what chemicals are responsible for the attraction of the bloodsuckers.
Be careful out there!