The Truth About Ticks
Whether doing yard work or completing daily farm chores, enjoying a family camping trip, or taking a hike through the woods, bugs tend to try and ruin your pleasurable experience. While we invest money on citronella candles, zappers, and spray to keep pesky bugs away, we often still end up with bug bites. If we are lucky, we only need to put up with the annoying itching and irritation a few days at most, but sometimes bug bites can lead to bigger problems, especially when it comes to ticks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States. Lyme disease can be transmitted to humans through a tick bite from an infected black-legged tick, commonly referred to as a deer tick. To transmit an infection, the tick often must be present on the skin for 36 to 48 hours. The results of the illness or pathogens transmitted by ticks often begin days to weeks after the tick is gone. After a tick bite, individuals may develop symptoms due to the organism that the tick transmits during its bite including fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans, often resembling a "bull's eye" or “halo” appearance. If left untreated, an infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system. Therefore, the earlier a tick is removed it decreases the probability of the tick transmitting any disease.
If an insect bite concerns you, try and document your encounter to best identify the culprit. It is helpful to know when you first noticed the bite and where you think the bite occurred. The more accurate you can be with these answers, the best chance your bite can be identified, and appropriate treatment can be determined.
Here are three ways you can best prevent tick bites from occurring:
Be proactive by knowing where to expect ticks before you leave the house. Ticks live in grassy, brushy, or wooded areas, or even on animals. Spending time outside walking your dog, camping, gardening, or hunting could bring you in close contact with ticks. Many people get ticks in their own yard or neighborhood.
Pretreat clothing and gear. Use products containing 0.5% permethrin or use an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered insect repellent. In some cases, you can buy permethrin-treated clothing and gear, which can stay active through several washings.
Examine your pets, clothing, and body for ticks. Conduct a full body check including under the arms, in and around the ears, inside belly button, back of the knees, in and around the hair line, between the legs, and around the waist.
If you locate a tick on your body, remove it quickly and safely. Use clean, fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin’s surface as possible. Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick; this can cause the mouthparts to break off and remain in the skin. If this happens, remove the mouthparts with tweezers. If you cannot remove the mouth easily with tweezers, leave it alone and let the skin heal. After removing the tick, thoroughly clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol or soap and water. Never crush a tick with your fingers. Dispose of a live tick by putting it in alcohol, placing it in a sealed bag/container, wrapping it tightly in tape, or flushing it down the toilet.
Some of the content and information used within this piece came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov).
The “Safety Day Corner” is a safety message by the Progressive Agriculture Foundation® (PAF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, with the mission to provide education, training, and resources to make farm, ranch, and rural life safer and healthier for all children and their communities. Recognized as the largest rural safety and health education program for children in North America, the Foundation’s Progressive Agriculture Safety Day® program, has reached more than 1.9 million youth since the program’s inception in 1995. For more information about PAF and its programs, visit: www.progressiveag.org.