Health Topics – Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts
Jul 10, 2026 · 1 min · 3 segments
Mosquitoes aren’t just a nuisance, they transmit disease. So when you bring everyone over for a backyard barbeque keeping them away is a priority. Johns Hopkins mosquito expert Christopher Potter says…
Elizabeth Tracy
Johns Hopkins mosquito expert Christopher Potter says if he'd rather not pass out the bug spray, there are other products that are quite effective.
There's a class of spatial repellents that are also insecticides that work pretty well.
It's these pyrethroid classes like transfluthrin, permethrin, and you can buy them as it heats it up basically to get it out into the air.
That's pretty effective because it's insecticide.
So if the mosquito comes in contact with it, it will die.
And also if they don't like the odor of it as well.
So that one's pretty good for the backyard barbecues.
Otherwise you need to use like a spatial repellent, one of these oil of lemon eucalyptus is pretty decent.
That's like a lemony odor to it, so it smells actually pretty good.
Johns Hopkins mosquito expert Christopher Potter says if he'd rather not pass out the bug spray, there are other products that are quite effective.
There's a class of spatial repellents that are also insecticides that work pretty well.
It's these pyrethroid classes like transfluthrin, permethrin, and you can buy them as it heats it up basically to get it out into the air.
That's pretty effective because it's insecticide.
So if the mosquito comes in contact with it, it will die.
And also if they don't like the odor of it as well.
So that one's pretty good for the backyard barbecues.
Otherwise you need to use like a spatial repellent, one of these oil of lemon eucalyptus is pretty decent.
That's like a lemony odor to it, so it smells actually pretty good.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
