Testing Methods for Mosquito-Repellent Treated Textiles

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16.6

INFLUENCING FACTORS

There are many influencing factors that impact the testing results about repellents

(Barnard et al. 2006) and repellent-treated textiles/clothing against mosquitos. Major fac-

tors could be catalogued as the following:

• Abiotic factors: Major abiotic factors include the testing materials and the environ-

mental conditions, such as different textile materials including cotton, polyesters,

washing of materials, air temperatures, humidity, wind speed, lights, seasons, geo-

graphic location, vegetation, time of the day, testing methods, and the size of the

testing cage.

• Biotic factors: There are two major parts about the biotic factors, such as human

or animal as attractants and mosquito selves. Testing subjects’ attraction, body part,

age, and weight as attractants may influence the testing results. Target mosquito

species, population density and used number of mosquitos, daily activity pattern,

ages, parity, partial blood engorgement, and sugar availability are the major factors

on the testing results (Barnard and Xue 2006).

16.7

CHALLENGES AND CONCLUSIONS: TOWARDS AN INTERNATIONAL

STANDARD

There are no international standards or protocols and methods established for mosquito

repellent treated textile testing and evaluation. The most common and recognized method

is the WHO method, American Society for Testing and Materials Method, and U.S. EPA

guideline. Recently, innovative vector control consortium (IVCC) and WHO evaluated and

recognized several testing centers as Good laboratory practice (GLP) laboratories world-

wide. The International Standard Organization (ISO) evaluated and established standard

testing method for the insect repellent-treated textiles against mosquitos. We hope that this

chapter will help to define International standards, protocols, and methods for mosquito

repellent treated textiles in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is partly based on work performed within the framework of IMAAC

(https://imaac.eu/) related to COST Action CA16227 (Investigation & Mathe-

matical Analysis of Avant-garde Disease Control via Mosquito Nano-Tech-Repellents,

https://cost.eu/actions/CA16227/), supported by COST Association (Euro-

pean Cooperation in Science and Technology).