It was a textbook summer evening: the air was warm, a gentle breeze toyed with the clematis and, as the sun went down, the air became thick with mosquitoes descending on our bare flesh.
Muggy Britain is, of course, Shangri-La for flying insects, with this week’s damp, relatively warm conditions proving irresistible to mosquitoes. And although Zika doesn’t currently pose a major threat in Britain, it’s moving. More than 50 cases have been confirmed in the UK, and there is concern in Florida, where there have been four cases of transmission. With the Olympics in Rio starting this week, these are troubling times for world health.
But where there’s muck, there’s brass. The possibility of a global epidemic has provided an opportunity for insect repellent. Melissa Fensterstock, the co-founder of Aromaflage, one such product, says the boost has been considerable: “It’s selling very well, especially given the scare.” Its USP is that it’s free of Deet (the active ingredient commonly found in alternative products) and smells nice – the daytime scent smells of vanilla, cedarwood and orange (custard, really) – so you can wear it all the time. Indeed, it’s marketed as a perfume, not a bug spray. Unlike Deet, it works by creating a sort of force field around your skin that mosquitoes don’t want to penetrate. There is no consensus around how Deet works, but it’s thought it either confuses mosquitoes by masking your scent or creates a smell that mosquitoes don’t like.
Does it work? When tested in a lab in Iowa on Aedes agypti, the mosquito that can carry Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, it was found to be as effective as 25% Deet over two and a half hours. That evening, in the garden, it was a slightly different story. I rinsed one-quarter of a bottle and was left alone, bar two bites: a compromised result, but still promising for a Deet-free (if fairly pricey, at about £40) product. Luckily, I’m neither pregnant nor going to the Olympics. Even if I was, it’s not mosquito season in Rio.
• This article was amended on 5 August 2016. An earlier version described Aromaflage as “chemical-free”.
