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Surfactants safely take down mosquitoes without using insecticides
- throwanem 3y agoAn aqueous surfactant solution will suffocate any insect to which it's applied, not just mosquitoes. This has long been well known and there is nothing novel here, although I'm sure they'll find some excuse for a patent application.
- hinkley 3y agoIt’s up there with sprinkling diatomaceous earth like pixie dust. It’s razor wire for all insects.
- amluto 3y agoFish often don’t like surfactants either. 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.
- genewitch 3y agoIPA (isopropyl alcohol, rubbing alcohol) kills nearly every insect, too. It doesn't kill centipedes, though - at all. It just makes them angry. (nearly) Anything else a square hit with a spray bottle or spritzer is enough to cause death, within minutes if not seconds.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoI found this out the hard way. When my sister and I were young, there was a carnival nearby, and they had some sort of ball toss game where you could win a goldfish. So we both won our goldfish and took them home in the tiny globe aquariums. 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.
- vezycash 3y agoHow about a foldable, indoor mosquito wall with a large surface area to increase the probability of mosquitoes zapping themselves? DC current, just high enough to render em flightless and apart from the human in the room, no extra attractant is needed.
- tehwebguy 3y agoWhat’s the largest cost in making this wall? Is this just basic materials, a frame and some steel mesh? Might try this in NC this summer.
- vezycash 3y agoSame design as a mosquito zapper but larger and is always on.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoLike any bug zapper, it’s mostly gonna kill stuff other than mosquitos.
- vezycash 3y ago> it’s mostly gonna kill stuff other than mosquitos When used indoors?
- cudgy 3y agoA simple fan can do wonders to keep mosquitos away. No chemicals needed … just a power source.
- vezycash 3y agoNope. Fans doesn't stop the lil bastards from biting me.
- bragr 3y agoI learned recently from a bee keeping youtuber that the recommended method for euthanizing a problematic hive is just dumping in a bunch of soapy water which kills them for the same reason. https://youtu.be/O4ldpyIE5t4 https://youtu.be/O4ldpyIE5t4
- christophilus 3y agoAs a one time amateur beekeeper, what makes a hive so problematic that you’d want to kill it entirely?
- macintux 3y agoVarroa?
- tommiegannert 3y agoThey were extremely hostile and attacked much more than his other hives, even far away. It was difficult to get anything done.
- bragr 3y agoHe couldn't even go in his yard without being swarmed. He was genuinely concerned for his and his families safety. His other hives are much more docile.
- thrixton 3y agoI’ve eradicated 2 nests of european wasps here in Australia by dumping a pretty strong solution of dish soap and water down the nest. 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.
- AlbertCory 3y agoAs others point out, this is (a) not susceptible to developing resistance, (b) applicable to lots of species besides mosquitoes, and (c) feels soapy if it lands on you. For (b) and (c), it probably also has some effect on plants it lands on.
- el_nahual 3y agoSurfactants are just soap, and their mechanism of action is mechanical: they will physically remove a membrane, or clog a pore, or whatever. 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.
- ljf 3y agoThis is the same reason I far prefer to disinfect with bleach rather than antibacterial cleaners - the anti bacterial properties last for ages and are messing up the sewage plants here in the UK. Can't imagine what they are doing to our water ways here (sewage ends up in our streams and lakes with alarming regularity). Bleach on the other hand loses effectiveness quickly.
- nsajko 3y agoI hope no one is actually making antibacterial cleaners with antibiotics, though.
- ljf 3y agoLikewise, but don't forget that bacteria have loads of uses and niches in the environment, so killing 'good bacteria' in a stream or environment (or in your body) can have greater impacts than it might first seem.
- devilbunny 3y agoGenerally, "antibacterial" cleaners are full of antibiotics. The ones used are usually those that are poorly absorbed by the human GI tract, and thus of limited potential medical use in humans. But since the mechanisms of action aren't unique, they too promote antibiotic resistance.
- gumby 3y agoPeople have put a small layer of oil over stagnant water for a long time. It's environmentally pretty innocuous (just use a plant oil) and stops them from breeding.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoA lot of people use diesel for this, which is not great.
- dilawar 3y agoMosquitos are pretty common in India and kills enough people, though roughly 8 times less than road accidents. Malaria is no longer very deadly but Dengue treatment indeed is pretty costly. Sometimes I feel that dengue cases are higher in cities than in villages. 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.
- leetbulb 3y agoI just use diluted IPA in a spray bottle. Kills almost all bugs near instantly and it's relatively safe and very cheap.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoWhat is IPA?
- kaoD 3y agoWhat does IPA mean here?
- cs02rm0 3y agoIsopropyl alcohol, I assume.
- genewitch 3y ago*except centipedes 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.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoWhat is concentrated aspirin? Mint extract or IPA? Neither of those contains any acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) as far as I know / can research.
- Sharlin 3y agoRelated: "Mosquitoes survive raindrop collisions by virtue of their low mass" by Dickerson et al. [1]; see also MITTechTV's "How mosquitoes fly in rain" [2]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1205446109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1205446109 [2] https://youtu.be/Akkjs1_FfMg https://youtu.be/Akkjs1_FfMg
- sitkack 3y agoKilling off mosquitoes will have an impact on the bird population.
- watmough 3y agoAs a pet owner, rather than using insecticides, I use a couple gallons of hot water mixed with washing-up liquid to eliminate fire ant nests in my yard. 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.
- bfrog 3y agoSo dawn soap? Nice!
- jaclaz 3y ago... if you manage to catch them with the spray, it doesn't seem very practical.
- K0balt 3y agoProbably also detrimental to other insects, I hope not but probably. Insects are a key element in the biosphere ad without them we would be pretty screwed.
- shaky-carrousel 3y agoThey talk about using it with sprinklers in the article.
- kadoban 3y agoThey talk about that, but how would that work? How would you do that without just inundating the entire area with soap? I don't want mosquitoes but I also want my yard to not be a permanent soapy mess.
- jaclaz 3y ago>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_environmental_risks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfactant#Safety_and_environm...
- kadoban 3y ago> And what would happen to a lawn? 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?
- DannyBee 3y ago
- newman8r 3y agoI question how safe it actually is - I'd assume it could impact a lot of other biological processes in the environment. They can change the way other compounds in the environment are absorbed by plant and animal tissue. At the same time, massive amounts of surfactants are already used with herbicides like roundup, so we do have an idea of how it might impact things - but that's in an agricultural setting.
- yeknoda 3y agoWould not recommend adding anything to water streams. Water with surfactants could cause more permanently contaminated water. Water is remarkably clean despite all the pollutants and garbage and dirt out there because particulates and contaminants deposit and fall out of solution relatively quickly. Surfactants could slow that down.
- 1-6 3y agoIt's relatively easy to make any surfactant. Good news for all of us needing to make a quick spritz to kill pesky mosquitos.
- copperx 3y agoI don't think any surfactant works, according to the article.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nashashmi 3y agoThe drastic reduction in the number of bugs in our air scares me. it is a problem nobody’s talking about.
- dylan604 3y agoany bug other than mosquitoes. for mosquitoes, we're one step away from take off and nuke it from orbit. it's the only way to be sure
- vasco 3y agoThere's loads of studies on the subject, plenty of people are talking about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population...
- toomim 3y agoWhat's to say that (a) the mosquitos won't develop a resistance to the surfactants, as they do to conventional insecticides, and (b) the surfactants won't be as damaging to the environment as other insecticides? 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.
- wnevets 3y agoFWIW alot of surfactants used on the consumer market today are derived from petroleum and may even be harmful to the environment . Calling it just soap is sort of funny.
- likpok 3y agoThere’s lots of chemicals that are extremely lethal to pests with apparently limited ability to develop resistance. There’re no bleach resistant bacteria, for example, and no fire-resistant moths. 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.
- hackernewds 3y agoBut bleach is not safe for humans either. Other examples such as bleach: heavy weights, bullets, fire, acid
- copperx 3y agoI think there are bacteria that can withstand acid.