This Perfume Can Repel Mosquitoes

Here’s something to keep in mind for the next mosquito season.

If you don’t have access to an insect repellent containing the common active ingredient diethyltoluamide, or DEET, then the Victoria’s Secret perfume called “Bombshell” may be the next best thing to ward off pesky bloodsuckers.

That’s according to recent research conducted by scientists at New Mexico State University, who were quite surprised by the perfume’s mosquito-repelling power.

“We were very surprised when we found that Bombshell repels mosquitoes better than some products that are marketed as mosquito repellents,” Dr. Immo Hansen, associate professor of biology at the university and a co-author of the research, told The Huffington Post. “This particular perfume has a very sweet, flowery scent and there are some publications suggesting that such scents attract mosquitoes.”

The researchers tested how effective 10 commercially available products are in repelling the two common mosquitoes species, yellow fever mosquitoes and Asian tiger mosquitoes. The products included repellents that contained DEET; common home remedy repellents such as Avon Skin So Soft bath oil; and Bombshell, which allowed the researchers to test how mosquitoes really react to flowery perfumes.

“The Bombshell perfume was a birthday present for Lisa Drake, one of the co-authors of the study,” Hansen said. “I don’t know why she brought the bottle in the lab, but when I smelled it I knew that we had to test it.”

The researchers used a Y-shaped tube to test the overall attraction rates of the mosquitoes to the products. The bottom of the tube was connected to a holding chamber containing about 20 mosquitoes.

Then, at one end of the fork in the Y-tube was a volunteer’s bare hand coated in whichever product was being tested, and a fan that blew the scent of the product toward the mosquitoes. At the other end of the fork was nothing.