Why can pregnant women wear deet based bug sprays?
Huh? I’m extra-delicious to mosquitoes as well, and certainly nobody’s told me to throw out my bug spray. “Women are often concerned about using DEET during pregnancy, but the available data on toxic effects in humans and animals are reassuring. An animal study published in 1994 reported no adverse effects in the offspring of rats and rabbits force fed different concentrations of DEET at different times of gestation, with one exception.16 The highest DEET dose (325 mg/kg daily), by orders of magnitude higher than the normal human dose, resulted in maternal toxic effects and low birth weights of offspring. There was no evidence of fetal toxic effects or malformations in the offspring of exposed animals, regardless of the dose used. No observations on behaviour or neurologic development were reported.16 The first study of the safety of DEET when used regularly during the second and third trimesters was a randomized, double-blind trial involving 897 pregnant women in Thailand who continuo
