The Toilet Water You Use is Actually a Pesticide?

Every summer, mosquitoes can track you down in real time just like a radar, and they won't give up until they give you a few bites.

In order to avoid the containment of mosquitoes, as it were, people are racking their brains to find ways to keep them away. Spraying toilet water is the most widely used techniques.

However, do you know mosquito-repellent toilet water is actually a pesticide? 

Toilet water belongs to a kind of pesticide. See the watermark for image source

Why is Toilet Water a Pesticide?

To begin with, from the composition of mosquito-repellent toilet water, the active ingredients are generally DEET and BAAPE. Both of them were developed as pesticides that are used to repel agricultural pests.

More importantly, China has regulated that mosquito-repellent products belong to sanitary pesticides, which are managed as pesticide products and supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture.

A qualified mosquito-repellent product must obtain three certificates for pesticides (pesticide production license or pesticide production approval, pesticide standard and pesticide registration certificate) as required and the package should be so marked before it is put on the market. 

When applying for registration and submitting materials for mosquito-repellent products in China, it is necessary to submit some additional reports (e.g. all kinds of experimental materials, such as the physicochemical properties of products, 5-batch analysis report of bulk drug, quality inspection report, efficacy, toxicology and environmental impact test), to clarify the physicochemical properties of products. 

Having seen this, you've got to ask: Now that mosquito-repellent toilet water is a pesticide, can we still use it to repel mosquitoes happily? 

Is it Really Safe to Repel Mosquitoes with Pesticides?

Although mosquito-repellent toilet water contains pesticides, there is absolutely no need to treat it like a scourge.

As the saying goes, “it is just like playing hooliganism to talk about toxicity without mentioning the dose”, AND the same also holds true for mosquito-repellent toilet water.

DEET, the active ingredient of mosquito repellent, is the most studied and widely used mosquito repellent, whose effectiveness and safety has passed long-term trials. 

In addition, China has specially categorized the dosage forms of mosquito repellent for various registered products to regulate the production of products, for example, the active ingredient contents in mosquito-repellent incense, electric mosquito-repellent liquid vaporizer and mosquito-repellent toilet water are 25.0%, 12.5% and 2.3%, etc. 

In a manner of speaking, as long as you purchase mosquito-repellent products from regular manufacturers and employ them in strict accordance with the instructions, your safety can be guaranteed. 

DEET has a remarkable mosquito repellent effect, but still it has certain toxicity. In order to make mosquito-repellent products safer, BAAPE, a less toxic mosquito repellent ingredient, begins to take the place of DEET. 

Compared with DEET, BAAPE has lower toxicity, less irritation and longer mosquito repellent effect. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers “BAAPE to be safe to all populations, including infants and children”. For this reason, today, many people take BAAPE products as preferred mosquito repellent for children.

Apart from the above two mosquito repellent ingredients, sec-Butyl 2-(2-hydroxyethyl)piperidine-1-carboxylate, lemon eucalyptus oil and pyrethroid mosquito repellent substances represented by permethrin are also widely accepted mosquito repellent ingredients. Most mosquito-repellent products on the market use these substances as active ingredients for repelling mosquitos.

Unquestionably, although existing mosquito-repellent products are very safe, we should still pay attention not to directly apply them to skin injury or lesion, in case of secondary harm.

Secondly, the existing data are inadequate to confirm the safety of mosquito-repellent products for pets. Some repellent substances are distinctly toxic to fish and reptiles. Among mammals, cats often demonstrate sensitivity to mosquito-repellent products, so if there are pets at home, mosquito-repellent products should be used with caution.

In addition, not all toilet water on the market contains DEET and other mosquito-repellent ingredients. The ingredients of antipruritic toilet water are mainly plant extracts that cool skin down. When choosing toilet water, we should purchase according to needs.

How to Choose Mosquito-repellent Products?

After talking about the selection of toilet water, let's move on to discuss how to buy safe and reliable mosquito-repellent products.

For one thing, when purchasing mosquito-repellent products, we should take note of the important information on the package: approval number, batch number, expiry date, active ingredients, usage and precautions, etc. Only when all kinds of information of products are explicit and clear can security be ensured.  

For another, we should carefully differentiate rumors related to mosquito-repellent products. Every summer, there are always many rumors that toilet water is toxic, so people turn to recommend overseas products such as“Green Herbal Ointment”and“RES-Q Ointment”. The intended users are only children over 2 years old. Perhaps, it is hard for them to protect you from mosquitoes.

The reason why products like “RES-Q Ointment” came into vogue is that merchants make use of people's concerns about the safety of ingredients like “DEET” and “BAAPE”. In fact, these mosquito-repellent ingredients are not put on the market until they pass repeated tests. There are basically no safety problems as long as they are used correctly. 

Definitely, even if you are allergic to the above repellent ingredients, or you are afraid to use these products because you raise pets at home, you may try other ways to avoid mosquito bites.

Such as Mosquito lamp, electronic mosquito swatter and mosquito net, etc....

In the end, may you all have a great summer without mosquito bites.