27-05-2025
I Got My Clothes Coated With Insect Shield Tick Killer
Wirecutter's resident bug expert, Doug Mahoney, has written that he uses permethrin spray on his family's socks and shoes. In that article, he cites one study's finding that people who wore treated footwear were 74 times less likely to get a bite from a tick nymph than those who did not.
'I take the hint from that study and concentrate on the feet because it's impractical to treat the entire summer wardrobes of the six people in my immediate family,' Doug writes, adding that they spray the rest of their clothes and skin with picaridin as needed.
That's a perfectly good approach. Personally, though, I get some peace of mind from knowing that my family has a few outfits that are as tick-proofed as any clothes can be — including socks, pants, T-shirts, and hoodies. These are the clothes we'll wear when we're in prime tick territory, pulling up weeds around the unkempt edges of the yard, say, or going hiking with the dog. I'll spend less time second-guessing whether we have enough protection. Insect Shield stitches or stamps an info label onto each item you send in for treatment. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter
Thomas Mather, PhD, a professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island and a co-author of the study referenced above, says that fully grown ticks are more likely to hitch a ride above shoe level.
'The adult ones tend to climb up vegetation a little bit' in search of a large host, he says. 'Then you would want to have your socks and pants treated.' (Mather's TickEncounter program at URI has received funding from Insect Shield.)
Ticks can also crawl around. I found one on my daughter's scalp this March, and that seemed like a good reason to treat a few shirts, just in case the shoes or pants didn't kill the ticks first. The same study that found the benefits of treated footwear also found that a treated T-shirt can reduce the likelihood of a tick nymph bite by about half. It's a nice bonus that our pesticidal shirts might stop some mosquito bites, too.
Cost-wise, the Insect Shield mail-in treatment can be a solid deal compared to manually spraying a set of clothes. If you follow the directions on the Sawyer spray bottle, you use about $3 worth of permethrin spray to treat an outfit at home; you'll need to reapply the spray at least a handful of times throughout tick season, probably to the tune of $15 to $25 per outfit per year.
I managed to fit roughly four outfits (four pants, three T-shirts, and three long-sleeves, with enough room leftover for a couple of pairs of socks) into the Insect Shield Your Clothes Easy Pack envelope, which cost $102 with an on-site discount code. (Without the code, it's $120.)
So that's about $25 per outfit, in a price range similar to that of spraying clothes yourself across a full tick season, without any of the manual labor. I'm not convinced that the treatment will last as long as Insect Shield claims, but even if I get only one good year of protection (and I think I'll get more than that), it's a solid deal. Mather says that he sends clothes in annually for re-treatment, and Griffin of Insect Shield says that, as far as he knows, reapplication works well.
Whereas I used Insect Shield's flat-rate, all-you-can-fit option, the company will also treat individual items for $9 each, or $13.50 for coveralls. That rate doesn't include shipping, as the Easy Pack does, but if you're sending a bunch of bulky items like adult-size pants or long-sleeved shirts made of heavy fabric, you might get more for your money with the per-piece rate. If you're treating a load of socks or kids' clothes, then the Easy Pack is probably the better value.
Griffin says that every year Insect Shield treats upward of 50,000 items at the company's facility in North Carolina through its Insect Shield Your Clothes service, and it runs the gamut. 'We see shirts, pants, shorts, T-shirts, hats,' and of course lots of socks, he said. But the company doesn't treat underwear or shoes.
It also doesn't treat clothes that can be only dry-cleaned or line-dried, or otherwise not tumble-dried. It can't effectively treat waterproof or water-resistant gear, either. 'It's just really hard to get the permethrin to bond well to those garments,' he said.
