Health Topics – Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts
Jun 29, 2026 · 1 min · 3 segments
Keeping mosquitoes away may be more important than ever as malaria returns to the continental US and other viral illnesses are also transmitted by them. Johns Hopkins mosquito expert Christopher…
Elizabeth TracyThese different chemicals that we're using to keep mosquitoes away from us, how are they actually doing that? There's three main ways it does it.
The first is it can be an odor that the mosquito doesn't like.
It keeps them away from us because they just hate that smell.
Another way is it's a contact
They don't care about the smell of it, but as soon as they touch it, because remember there's neurons on the mosquito legs, they hate it.
tastes horrible or maybe it burns to a certain degree.
And the other thing that it could do is called masking.
They can trap chemicals onto your skin so your body odor is not being volatilized to get out there.
And so the mosquito has a harder time finding you because you're kind of invisible to them.
These different chemicals that we're using to keep mosquitoes away from us, how are they actually doing that? There's three main ways it does it.
The first is it can be an odor that the mosquito doesn't like.
It keeps them away from us because they just hate that smell.
Another way is it's a contact
They don't care about the smell of it, but as soon as they touch it, because remember there's neurons on the mosquito legs, they hate it.
tastes horrible or maybe it burns to a certain degree.
And the other thing that it could do is called masking.
They can trap chemicals onto your skin so your body odor is not being volatilized to get out there.
And so the mosquito has a harder time finding you because you're kind of invisible to them.
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