Peak tick season is underway in Kentucky and that means the risk of tick-borne health threats like Lyme Disease and Alpha-gal syndrome is higher, too. Jonathan Larson is an extension entomologist with the University of Kentucky. He said people shouldn’t be afraid to go outside and there are ways to reduce the risk of being bitten by what he calls “little blood-sucking ninjas.”
“If it was a 10-minute weeding trip to your garden, if it was an all-weekend hike, you need to be doing tick checks pretty regularly during those kinds of activities. So looking on your clothes and looking on your skin to see if ticks have climbed aboard, it takes a little bit of time to wear it to find where they want to bite.”
A new study by the state Department of Public Health and the University of Kentucky shows the number of ticks is rising in the commonwealth. Larson said while ticks are nearly everywhere, there are measures people can take to help keep them off their property.
“If you do brush removal, if you have wood piles, sometimes using those wood piles up faster, you can also create a sort of tick barrier around the property, maybe a three-foot-wide area of pebble mulch or wood chip mulch, that will make it harder for them to go from a woods onto your lawn.”
Larson said a DEET repellant makes us less tasty to ticks, while permethrin spray on clothing can kill them.
