2023-07-04 11:08:50
Mosquito control remains an exceptionally serious problem for modern people. Being naturally excellent hunters, A wise man quite easily cope with predators of any size or elephants, so the victims from such animals are few. Mosquitoes, on the other hand, kill at least a million person per year (carrying malaria, dengue and other diseases) without much harm to their populations. In 1934 alone, in the USSR, for example, 9.4 million people fell ill with malaria. According to some calculations, out of 110 billion people who have ever lived, mosquitoes have killed about 50 billion (most of the victims are children), making them the most dangerous animals in human history.
In the 20th century, there was a serious turning point in the fight against mosquitoes: DDT allowed to get rid of malaria and dengue even such large countries as the USA or the USSR (in the latter – only from malaria). However, then, due to an effective PR campaign without scientific justification, DDT was banned. Although he never killed a single person, and the rejection of it led to a large increase in mortality from “mosquito” diseases, nothing can be done here: the media portrait of DDT is terrible, which means that, whatever it is in reality, there will be no return to its use .
The results are already noticeable: in addition to the increase in the incidence in tropical countries, developed countries are becoming victims of “mosquito diseases”. For example, dengue has returned to the United States of America, which has not been seen for half a century, and dozens of people have died from one accidental outbreak of West Nile fever. Attempts to replace it with other insecticides have met with moderate success. Firstly, they are less effective in terms of price and quality ratio, and secondly, if mosquitoes do not land on the surface sprayed with DDT for months, then with other insecticides the effect disappears in weeks.
In such a situation, it is very important to create new mosquito repellents, and a group of Japanese researchers proposed a very original way to deal with bloodsuckers. They expanded proposed in 2020, the technology of using silicone oil to wet mosquito legs (this was supposed to prevent insects from landing on people and biting them), focusing on the use surfactants (surfactants) to moisten the bodies and wings of mosquitoes and change their behavior in flight.
Surfactants are widely used in cosmetics and cleaning products to dissolve various substances, and many of them are completely safe for humans, but by no means so harmless to mosquitoes. After making sure that spraying water on mosquitoes did not lead to the desired effect (they simply shook off the drops and flew on), the researchers added surfactants to the water, after which they immediately saw the effect: the insects moistened with the solution fell to the ground and could not fly further.
Then the scientists tested how their solution affects the viability of a mosquito if it gets on the body of an insect – and the result was even more impressive. The surfactant solution not only deadly weighed the flying mosquito, causing it to fall to the ground, but also clogged special holes – breatherthrough which the body of insects is supplied with oxygen.
Surfactants were quite effective against mosquitoes / © KaoJapan
What is especially attractive, unlike most insecticides, surfactants do not affect the mosquito from the inside, so it is unlikely that insects will be able to develop resistance to them. According to the authors of the study, which reported edition New Atlasthe new method will effectively and safely deal with blood-sucking insects.
However, there is still a long way to go before the final implementation. It will be possible to spray mosquitoes with a surfactant spray, but before that it will be necessary to prove the safety of its use on a large scale.
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