| That's easy - lyme disease. If you read the studies you linked, it even shows this very clearly. The first study is talking about constant occupational exposure. By people not wearing basic PPE, over the course of many many years. It's like taking a shower in permethrin every day for 30 minutes. You can pretty much substitute lots of every day things that get absorbed by skin for "permethrin" here and it would cause some very serious symptoms. The second study used 34mg/kg of permethrin. That is an insane amount, and one that you could not even likely get without intentional ingestion of concentrated powder form. If you weight 150lbs, that is 2300mg. So a huge horse sized pill of permethrin, every day, will cause issues. Shocking. 2300mg a day of most substances will cause issues. Hell, 2300mg a day of most things will cause serious issues faster than permethrin 2300mg of vitamin b3 would destroy your liver very quickly (weeks/months). 2300mg of vitamin b6 would cause permanent nerve damage very quickly (weeks/months) etc The reason we don't classify all pesticides as equally dangerous is because they are not all equally dangerous. Lumping them all together and painting them with a single brush is as unhelpful here as it is when it is done in any other context. Permethrin is just a synthetic version of pyrethrin, which is extracted from chrysanthemums. It is probably one of the least harmful substances you will ever be around. Lyme disease is easily a much greater threat to people than exposure to permethrin and derivatives while hiking. The exposure to wood dust and other small particles from disturbing the wood chips is probably a greater threat than the permethrin. |
I generally wear pants, full sleeve shirts, long socks etc whenever I go hiking but have still found ticks on me later on. Or do you mean something else by PPE?