Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Article By by Helen Lovell-Wayne

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The many pleasures of a summer hike in the woods or a backyard barbecue can be completely upended by a tick bite. Ticks are small parasitic animals that cause multiple health problems including Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  In order to survive ticks must ingest blood (Jessica Waldman et al 2024), in doing so they can cause: disease, infection, anemia, immunosuppression, reduced metabolism and digestion, reproductive problems and occasionally death (D. Quadros 2020).  Unfortunately, all the methods of tick control to date have not yielded satisfactory results.  

The pesticide market in Bazil alone costs over 960 million dollars (D. Sonenshein and Roe, M. 2014). The global cost of tick borne diseases was over 7 billion dollars in 2014 and it keeps rising (D. Sonenshein and Roe, M. 2014).  Despite spending these enormous sums of money, humankind is no closer to keeping these parasites from plaguing us then we were a century ago.  Ticks infest a large range of animals including birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles (Jessica Waldman et al 2024).  These parasites can enter our homes on both us and on our pets.  

🥛Ticks Are Affecting Our Food🍣

Ticks find their targets, then procced to use their mouthpieces to attach and pierce the skin. Then they start feeding on the target’s blood (Jessica Waldman et al 2024).  Tick control began in the mid- 1800’s for both people and livestock.  These measures included various mixtures of crude oil, lard, sulfur and kerosine (D. Sonenshein and Roe, M. 2014). Since 1967 chemical pesticides called acaricides have been used.

Acaricides are entering the ecosystem and causing problems in our food supply. They have the potential to contaminate the meat we eat and the  milk we drink  (A. Walker 2011; Abbas R. et al. 2014).  For example, in a relatively recent study, residues of several pesticides were found in 26%- 60% of the milk samples collected from conventional dairy farms.  However no pesticide residues were observed in organic milk samples (D. Quadros 2020).) Additionally, when acaricides enter the water from run off they disrupt the life cycle of aquatic organisms (A. Rahman 2022) which means less food for secondary consumers including people.

🐦‍⬛Tick Bite Prevention💉

First there is physical protection against ticks. This method predominantly relies on wearing appropriate clothes and  applying repellent on potential contact sites and areas (Jurisic, A. et al. 2023).  Fortunately, protection can be accomplished without the use of synthetic chemicals. Nootkatone, a compound found in grapefruit peels offers comparable efficacy to DEET against many types of tick including and not limited to: deer, lone star, blacklegged, and dog making it a compelling natural option (M. Dolan et al. 2019, A. Bharadwaj 2014, and E. Siegel et al 2023) There are also natural tick deterrents that can be sprayed on or fed to pets. However, ask your veterinarian before using a natural or synthetic chemical product

Secondly there is a vaccine for one disease encephalitis one disease that ticks carry. This is normally carried by the taiga and castor bean ticks (Tsireledzo, M. et al 2025).  If you live in an area where this tick is abundant you might want to ask your doctor whether, you should consider a vaccine. Next there are natural predators of ticks.  Some places encourage these predators in order to minimize their human exposure to ticks. Animals such as the oxpecker (a bird) and parasitoid wasps both eat and kill ticks (Tsireledzo, M. et al 2025). Other natural predators include nematodes, and fungi (Jessica Waldman et al 2024).  Be careful and only use native predators’ as nonnative animals cause other problems with the ecosystem. 

🌱Alter Tick Habitat☠️

Fourthly there is habitat alteration.  One of the ways to make a habitat tick unfriendly is by removing all the tall thick grass.  This reduces the moisture at ground level making it harder for tick larvae to find hosts.  The delay in finding a host can cause ticks to die because they do not get the blood they need. (Jessica Waldman et al 2024). Another way is ecological restoration.  This helps to reintroduce native plant and animal species that control ticks (Tsireledzo, M. et al 2025). For more information on keeping your yard as chemical and pest free as possible read a bluebird on my shoulder, war of the weeds, and/or bat in the belfry.

Fifthly, there is the method of killing as many ticks as possible in each area.  At the current time this can be only accomplished with chemicals.   However, the effectiveness of this approach is debatable.  Results of a large, randomized, placebo-controlled intervention study concluded that an application of acaricide to residential yards reduces the number of ticks, but does not substantially reduce the risk of tick-borne diseases (Hinckley, A. et al 2016.) The reasons for this result are varied but the fact is that some acaricides are not accomplishing their goal of reducing the effects of tick bites and they can be as dangerous for humans and pets as ticks ( A. Al-Rofaai and Bell-Sakyi, L.).

🌳Natural Tick Control Methods🌳

The reader might be wondering why there is not a natural alternative to the chemicals designed to deliver mass mortality of ticks. The biggest obstacle to using natural methods to eliminate ticks in a given area is regulation.  Natural methods must pass through the same FDA testing as their chemical equivalates do.  Plus, they need to go through the EPA as well.  Currently there are numerous plant species that show promise such as Juniper and Annona muricata (sweetsop), but they have not passed through all the testing yet.

Lastly there is an approach called Integrated pest management (IPM). IPM aims to lower or eliminate disease risk caused by ticks by reducing tick bites or pathogen prevalence to nearly zero (Stafford, K et al .2017).  It uses natural tick control methods as much as possible. The IPM strategy involves selecting, integrating, and implementating several pest control actions.  These strategies are based on ecological, economic, and sociological circumstances. (Stafford, K et al .2017) Chemicals are only used as a last resort. 

🕷️Tick Concluding Remarks🌎

At the present time the only ecological method of handling ticks is prevention.  This can be accomplished in several ways including but not limited to vaccination, natural predators, habitat alteration, or environmentally friendly bug spray. If ridding an entire area of ticks is your only option, then the most environmentally friendly way to accomplish this is IPM.  Hopefully a way to rid a large area of ticks in a natural way will be available in the near future.  Next time you think you are too small to make an impact, just remember that something smaller than your pinky finger, with no central brain can send you to the hospital and possibly kill you. ent