Post by FarOutFarley on Mar 14, 2022 6:33:14 GMT -8
I got lyme disease last summer, cured now. One problem is locating ticks on your clothing after you get home. I've found them crawling around my house. I found this 2016 study that says that putting dry clothing in the dryer on high heat for 4-6 minutes kills ticks. If you wash your clothes first it takes 50 minutes on high heat.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27156138/ "Most significantly, we found that all adult and nymphal ticks died when placed directly in the dryer with dry towels and dried for 4min on high heat (95% confidence limit, 6min)." 50% of the ticks survived washing in hot water.
Apparently they die by dessication. Should work well for shorts, pants, and shirts, but fleece jackets can't take high heat. I'm happy to know this, for both hiking and yard work. It's not practical to wear light colors for weedwacking so it's hard to find the little monsters.
