An American team has studied the change in attractiveness of the skin for mosquitoes depending on the soap used, which can change our smell.
It’s unfair, it’s always you who attract mosquitoes? Well maybe it’s because of your soap! Its role has in any case been demonstrated by an American scientific team. The details of Géraldine Zamansky, journalist at the Magazine de la Santé on France 5.
franceinfo: This research did not knowingly expose volunteers to mosquito bites?
Géraldine Zamansky : This team used small fabric bracelets that 4 volunteers had just kept on their skin for an hour. These bracelets were put in a cage filled with hungry female mosquitoes. Because they are the ones who bite us to “feed” their eggs. They use smells to find their favorite meal. Blood of course. But also sugar from the nectar of certain flowers.
So it is the often flowery scents of the soaps that attract them more or less?
This is exactly what Clément Vinauger and Chloé Lahondère explained to me, the two designers of this research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. To prove it, they compared the attraction of mosquitoes to pieces of fabric, worn on washed or unwashed skin, with different soaps.
They first studied the odors that evaporated from it. And it’s impressive, one hour after being washed, the skin diffuses more than 80% of the perfume of the soap used. So obviously, this influences mosquitoes. So much so that even the volunteer – well, his smell – which didn’t attract them at all spontaneously, began to please them!
These are American brands, and impossible to transpose them precisely here. But a first result is very clear: the product presented as more “natural”, flavored with coconut, has always had a dissuasive effect!
So by choosing the right soap for the summer, we could avoid mosquito attacks?
Maybe. But the two researchers specify that they still have to verify this effect beyond the hour following the shower. With summer perspiration, for example, the natural smell may quickly take over.
Anyway, by just mixing the 3 key ingredients of the soap that scared away mosquitoes, they achieved the same effect. The composition is in their scientific publication. So can look in your next soap for: gamma nonalactone (which would smell like watermelon), benzaldehyde (almond) and benzyl benzoate, which I have to tell you can cause allergies. Conversely, we should avoid the imitation of pineapple, adored by our little enemies.
