Imparting Mosquito Repellent Agents & Assessing Mosquito Repellency on Textile
study by (Stajkovic and Milutinovic
2013), the recommendation regarding
usage of repellent product for textile
materials is “the product should be
applied in a thin layer on the skin sur-
face, clothing or both, it should not be
applied under clothing”.Table 1 The structure of the most common synthetic repellent applied
on fabric (Stajkovic and Milutinovic 2013)
Repellents can come from natural
sources such as plant and chemical
source such as DEET (N,N-dietyl-m-
toluamide) the DEET along with other
synthetic such as Permethrin, Allethrin
and Malathion, has been proven to be
the most effective commercial repel-
lent formulation used in lotions, gels,
solution, cream and aerosols. Per-
methrin has been used on thousands
of US Military uniforms as insect re-
pellent agent in the military uniform.
The most common synthethic repel-
lents used to be applied on fabric are
DEET and Permethrin as done by (Fei
and Xin 2007; Frances 1987; Schoep-
ke et al. 1998; Sholdt et al. 1989). The
structure of DEET and Permethrin are
in the Table 1 below.
However, the use of synthetic repel-
lents such as DEET and other synthetic
repellent has been proven to cause
negative effect on human (Abou-Donia
1996; Koren et al. 2003; N’Guessan
et al. 2008; Stajkovic and Milutinovic
2013). Permethrin, for example, is tox-
ic in high doses, and constant skin
contact can result in dermatitis (Brown
and Hebert 1997). Regulation of absorp-
tion, ingestion and uptake of synthetic
repellents such as Permethrin was set
up by the US Environmental Protec-
tion Agency. Accord- ing to EPA cal-
culation of the cancer risk is based on
the likelihood of one to three people in
-6
1 million (13 × 10 ) developing as a
negligible risk. The military and non
military workers were calculated at (1–
-6
3 × 10 ) developing as a negligible risk.
The military and non military workers
-6
were calculated at (1.2 × 10 ) and
-6
(3.6 × 10 ) which fall below the EPA
level of concern (Agency 2007; Banks
et al. 2014). The side effect of synthet-
ic repellents made the medicinal plants
as an alternative for mosquito repel-lents sources. There are a lot of me-
dicinal plants having potential to repel
mosquito such as marigold, basil, chry-
santhemum, citronella lavender includ-
ing geranium (Rajkumar and Jebane-
san 2007; Sritabutra et al. 2011). Re-
pellents derived from plant sources,
exhibit essential oils dem- onstrated it
has short lasting protection due to ox-
idation of essential oils, lasting from a
few minutes to as long as 2 h (Fradin
and Day 2002; Kongkaew et al. 2011;
Rajkumar and Jebanesan 2007; Sri-
tabutra et al. 2011) however, these dis-
advantages can be overcome by the
addition or modification of the essen-
tial oil. The microencapsulation of the
herbal oil can secure the oil from get-
ting easily oxidized when exposed to
the environment before imparting the
solution to fabric (Brain et al. 2007;
Maheshwari and Ramya 2014; Sumith-
ra and Vasugi Raja 2012). The addition
of vanilla essential oil is claimed to
prolong the efficacy of the oils
(Tawatsin et al. 2001).
The efficacy of the mosquito repellents
can be evaluated using a standard
methods according to World Health
Organization (WHO) (WHO 1996), and
American Society for Testing Materi-
als (ASTM) (Standards 2006). The
NCM-OCTOBER 2021
36most commonly used method for mos-
quito repellents which is cage test. For
impregnated textiles, there are sever-
al meth- ods to determine the effec-
tiveness of the treated textiles. The
methods are cone test, cage test, field
test and excito chamber (Sritabutra
et al. 2011; Standards 2006; Tawatsin
et al. 2001; WHO 1996). The methods
and the assessment of repellency test
were discussed further in this review.
Review of methods
The following search engines were used
to obtained information on different test
method of insect repellency assess-
ment: Google Scholar, Springer Link
and PubMed. The terms used for the
search are: ‘mosquito repellent finish-
es’, ‘impregnated textiles’, ’insecticide
fabric’, ’arm-in cage test’, ’WHO cone
test’ and ‘Aedes aegypti’. The published
articles that were referred dated be-
tween 1992 and 2014. The textile ma-
terials used in previ- ous mosquito re-
pellent studies, and the techniques of
imparting the repellent onto the textile
materials were reviewed. The three
methods of mosquito repellency as-
sessment that were discussed are the
cage test, the cone test, and the mod-
ified excito chamber. Of late, there are