Protect yourself and your family from ticks
Dress Appropriately
- Wear light colored clothing.
- Cover wrists and ankles. Tuck pants into socks and opt for long-sleeves.
- Wear clothing made with Insect Shield technology.
Spray it. Spray your outdoor clothing with Permethrin, which kills ticks on contact. Never spray it on skin. - Wear insect repellant with at least 20% DEET (to repel ticks for at least 4 hours). Spray it on outdoors. Wash off when you come go in.
Watch it
- Know your surroundings
- Avoid tall grasses and humid, wooded, leaf-littered areas.
- Do not sit on logs
- Stay on trails
- Ticks live in yards and parks too.
Tick check it
- Check yourself and your family for ticks!
- Shower after being outdoors to wash off ticks that have not attached.
- Put your clothing into the dryer on high heat for 10-15 minutes (when coming indoors). Heat kills ticks.
Tick check
- Check for ticks after being outdoors.
- Check sides of body
- Groin area
- Back of your knee
- Under armpits
- Back of neck
- Tight places (belt area, watch strap, underneath hairline)
Check pets too!
Make tick checks a part of your daily routine. Check yourself and your family every night before dressing for bed.
Tick removal and testing
- Remove tick immediately
- Use pointy tip tweezers
- Grab tick close to skin and use slow, steady motion to pull tick upward and away from the skin.
- Do not twist, jerk or agitate the tick while removing.
- After removing the tick, thoroughly clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol or soap and water.
- Identify tick
- Save or flush down the toilet
- Consider having the tick tested for harmful diseases.
Call your doctor
- If a tick has been attached for more than 24 hours (Transmission time is debatable, use your best judgment.)
- If you are not able to remove a tick.
Manage your property
- Ticks are not only in the woods; they are IN YOUR BACKYARD!
- Start by putting distance between tick habitat and people habitat.
- Keep play sets away from woodland edges
- Keep grass mowed
- Clear leaf litter and brush
- Build fences to keep deer out
- Let the sunshine in. Ticks don’t like dry, sunny places.
- Consider using acaricides (tick-killing pesticides)
