Imparting Mosquito Repellent Agents & Assessing Mosquito Repellency on Textile
Clothing can be treated with anti-agents
to keep mosquitoes from arriving or
encouraging, on the other hand, with
fast acting aerosol spray of the pyre-
throid gathering, for example, per-
methrin. These recent mixes does not
repulse the mosquitoes yet permit
them to reach with the fabric and ag-
gravate or killing them before they fig-
ure out how to bolster. The application
of anti-agents to dress and different
fabrics is desirable over skin applica-
tion on the grounds that it diminishes
the probability of hypersensitive re-
sponses. Former USSR have been
developed a vest that claimed as anti-
mosquito gar- ment which consist of
long sleeves made from wide mesh
materials with 0.5 cm fibres thick (Ro-
zendaal 1997). Study by Shannon iden-
tifies that garment piece with defensive
pieces of clothing adjusted to be worn
by outdoorsmen give protection against
mos- quitoes and different arthropods
without any repellent treatment on the
fabric. The garment comprises the
multilayer of fabric consist of outer and
inner layers which are connected at the
seams (Shannon 1988). The upholster-
ies and outdoor textile items as listed
on the Table 1 are existing products
that have been developed to be used
as individual outdoorsmen, housewife
and also family. Most of protective
mosquito tex- tiles were treated using
DEET or Permethrin by spraying the
repellents from a pressurized can or
by dipping it in the aqueous emulsion.
For the netting jackets head nets, the
materials are made from a blend of
polyester/cotton, which being treated
with DEET for easy absorption of the
mosquito agent. The disadvantage of
the netting jacket is that the structure
of the jacket which is made of a wide
mesh can be easily entangled. Anoth-
er limitation is the netting materials
must be wrapped in a plastic bag when
not in use.
Another example of mosquito repellent
associated with fabric is the detach-
able patches with Velcro strips, press
buttons or adhesive sticker. The treat-
ed patches can be easily removed anddo not have a direct contact with the
skin, therefore provides safety protec-
tion against mosquito Hammocks are
made from textile materials for resting
and sleep- ing, especially in jungle ar-
eas by outdoormens. It will be hung
onto the tree or anything that is tall
enough to keep off the ground from
soil, crawling insect, snake, scorpions
and anything small insects. However,
hammock does not protect users from
the flying insect such as mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes often attack hammock
user from the lower part of the ham-
mock where the body presses the tex-
tile. There are a few suggestions to
make hammock more protective
against mosquito. Application of repel-
lent such as spraying to the lower part
of the hammock may avoid the mos-
quito to get near. A more economical
method which requires a less repellent
agent is by attaching the netting ma-
terials such as a piece of cloth which
has been treated with repellent agent
at the lower part of the hammock. This
method can provide partial protection
from biting mosquitoes. Another way
for long lasting protection is to impreg-
nate the whole hammock with the re-
pellent.
Another protective mosquito textiles
are mosquito nets. The traditional net-
ting materi- als are made from raffia
(palm fibre), linen or hemp compared
to the modern net which made from
cotton and man-made fibre such as
nylon, polyester or polyethylene. The
mesh size of mosquito nets is between
1.2 and 1.5 mm, (if more that 2 mm
most mosqui- toes can enter). The
structure of the netting materials can
be woven or knitted. In terms of co-
lour, white color is more preferred as
mosquitoes that entered the nett can
be easily noticed compared to a dark-
er colour netting. For more protection,
the mosquito net can be treated with
mosquito repellent agent during the
production as it can act as physical
barrier to the entry of the mosquitoes
(Rozendaal 1997).
Insecticide-treated bed nets are likely
among the most well studied exam-
NCM-OCTOBER 2021
38ples and good indication of their viabil-
ity against bites and their significant
effect on pathogen trans- mission has
been accounted for by WHO (Banks
et al. 2014). The concerns regarding
treated clothes with repellents such as
DEET, are they really not irritate hu-
man skin of applied at to the cloth or
direct contact to skin. Are they pleas-
ant to use in daily wear such as odour
problem, greasiness or colour chang-
es on the textile.
Methods of imparting
repellent on textile materials
Based on the review of literatures,
there were various techniques to im-
part the mosquito repellent agents into
the fabrics. Table 3 below shows the
various studies of imparting tech-
niques onto the textile materials.
According to Banks et al. (2014) there
are four main techniques to achieve
the method of repellent textile which
are absorbed, incorporation, polymer
coating and microencap- sulation. The
absorption technique comprises the
method of spraying, dipping or pad dry
cure to fabrics, along with the use of
repellent agent. While the corporation
technique mainly used in carpets in-
dustry involves the process of pretreat-
ment carpet during the manufacturing
or dyeing process (McCamy and Clark
1996). The polymer coating and mi-
croencapsulation having similar tech-
nique which exhibit a layer of polymers
coated onto the textiles fibre, but the
microencapsulation must be in capsule
form that mixed to binding solution
(Appel et al. 2008; Banks et al. 2014;
Faulde and Uedelhoven 2006). Five
studies (Anitha et al. 2011; Fei and Xin
2007; Paya et al. 2010; Vigneshkumar
and Vijaykumar Vediappan 2012) re-
ported the treated textile with mosqui-
to repellents use the method of pad
dry cure method of the microencapsu-
lation repellents either from natural or
chemical sources. The existing devel-
opments using synthetic repellent in-
cluding insect textile repellent as men-
tion above. This is done by impregnat-