What You Need to Know About Bug Spray for Kids

A couple of steps that don’t involve repellents can help discourage bug-to-kid contact in the first place, so you can start with these.

For instance, get rid of any standing water in your yard, Asta says, and remove receptacles where water can collect and allow mosquitoes to breed—such as empty buckets, bird baths, and unused tires. To make the area less hospitable to ticks, clean up any dead leaves or overgrown brush, and mow long grasses. (Read more about anti-tick yard modifications you can make.)

If you’re going to be in an area where there may be a lot of mosquitoes, have kids wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. If you’re going hiking or into the woods or tall grasses, make sure they also tuck shirts into pants, wear closed-toe shoes, and tuck pants into long socks to help keep ticks from biting.

Showering and performing tick checks soon after coming in from wooded or otherwise tick-heavy areas has been shown to help reduce the chances of catching a tick-borne disease, so help your kids check themselves for attached ticks.

In CR’s testing, the products that provide the longest-lasting protection have one of three active ingredients: deet, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), or picaridin.

Deet products earn most of our top scores. Concentrations of 25 to 30 percent deet provide the most reliable, longest-lasting protection, repelling mosquitoes for 6 or 7 hours or more, in some cases. Two out of four sprays in our ratings with 15 percent deet also earn our recommendation.

When it comes to OLE and picaridin, the picture is slightly murkier. For OLE, four out of eight bug sprays in our ratings that contain 30 percent OLE earn our recommendation, providing protection for at least 5 hours. That makes OLE the second most consistent performer, after deet, in our tests. 

For picaridin, three sprays made with 20 percent concentration earn our recommendation, though a number of others don’t. One 10 percent picaridin product also earns our recommendation. Picaridin products in non-spray forms, such as lotions or wipes, generally perform unimpressively. We recommend sticking with sprays containing 20 percent concentration.

CR members can check our insect repellent ratings for the full details.

But what about safety? Here’s what the experts say.

Deet
The safety of this chemical, which has been available to consumers in insect repellents since 1965, has been thoroughly studied over the years. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, after a handful of health problems—such as seizures and brain damage—were reported in children who’d been exposed to deet, some parents became concerned about the ingredient. And some people still worry.

But according to the Environmental Protection Agency, those problems typically occurred after people failed to follow label instructions and used too much deet (PDF). An extensive 1998 EPA review of deet’s safety (PDF) estimated that deet-related seizures are exceedingly rare, likely to occur in only about 1 in 100 million users. And according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 update on the toxicity of deet (PDF), the overall risk of any problems appears to be quite low.

“To me, that puts it in perspective,” says Jerome Goddard, PhD, an extension professor of entomology at Mississippi State University—meaning that the benefits of preventing potentially life-threatening diseases transmitted by these bugs are likely to outweigh any risks, especially when deet is used as directed.

The CDC and EPA (and Consumer Reports) agree that deet is safe to use on kids as long as you follow the label instructions (see more on how below).

And take commonsense precautions, advises Joe Conlon, a former Navy entomologist and former technical adviser to the American Mosquito Control Association. “You should not leave bottles of this stuff around kids, because it is harmful if swallowed,” he says.

Once you’ve chosen an insect repellent for your child, take steps to maximize effectiveness and safety:

• The American Academy of Pediatrics advises using deet-based repellents sparingly when needed on children younger than 2. One option for limiting how much you need to use, Asta says, is to cover your infant’s stroller with netting when in buggy outdoor areas.
• Have an adult apply repellents to kids. For spray or lotion formula, adults should apply the repellent to their own hands, then rub it onto the child’s skin.
• Apply repellents only to exposed skin or on the outside of clothing.
• Avoid putting repellent on children’s hands, since they might then put their hands in their mouths. Don’t apply to any cuts, wounds, or irritated skin, or close to children’s mouths.
• Apply spray repellent in an open area to avoid inhaling it.
• Wash off repellent with soap and water at the end of the day when kids come inside, and launder clothes sprayed with repellent before they’re worn again.
• Know that not all formulations of repellents (sprays, lotions, or wipes) are equally effective. Of the lotions and wipes Consumer Reports has tested, only those whose active ingredient is deet perform well enough to earn our recommendation.
• When using towelettes to apply insect repellent to children, be sure to use enough of them to cover all exposed skin with repellent. Look for a clear shimmer of fluid on the skin after wiping, and avoid sharing the same wipe between two people in order to get the best coverage.

Ticks love tall grass and cool, damp areas. On the "Consumer 101" TV show, Consumer Reports expert Catherine Roberts explains how to make your yard less inviting to these pests.