15 Most Effective Tick Repellents 2023

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I talked with 10 tick experts to find the best tick repellents for humans and the best tick repellents for dogs. The best product is Off! Tick Repellent Towelettes.
For day-to-day tick prevention, Mather counts on clothing that’s been treated with permethrin. “Most of them come from a company called Insect Shield in North Carolina, and those can go through the wash about 70 times and still be effective,” he says. Since ticks start low and crawl high, permethrin-treated socks are a good first line of defense, since the chemical can stop, and kill, ticks in their tracks.
If your tick prevention strategies failed, or maybe you forgot to bring your permethrin-treated socks on your hike, and you ended up with a tick on your body, don’t panic. All you really need to remove a tick are pointy tweezers — but not flat-edged tweezers. That’s because you need to be precise. “Think of the tick as a bag of germs that happens to be connected to your skin with a straw,” explains Mather. If you squeeze the bug’s body with an imprecise tweezer, all those germs will be released through the “straw” and into your skin, which is gross. A pointed tweezer, on the other hand, will allow you to get as close as possible to the head of the tick, right next to the skin, and pull up at the connection point without squeezing the bug.