It’s not just climate change driving ticks into your backyard

It's a good feeling getting back outdoors as the spring weather truly kicks in. But like every year, the transition to warmer weather brings with it a risk of illness from mosquitoes and ticks, which can carry dangerous diseases such as Lyme, EEE and West Nile.

GBH's All Things Considered host Arun Rath spoke about the upcoming tick and mosquito season with Dr. Sam Telford III, a professor at the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: So we've already had our first tick encounter in our family this year, which feels kind of early. What is the outlook seem like it's going to be for this year?

Sam Telford III: Well, it was a warm winter, so people were encountering ticks all throughout the winter since last fall. But of course, they're going to be out gangbusters now that it's warmed up, the periods of time when you don't need gloves to go outside.

But I think forecast is something we really shouldn't be doing with public health. It's not a good thing to tell people, “This is going to be a bad year. You need to take precautions.” People get tired of hearing that. It's also not good to say, “This is going to be a low year for ticks. You don't have to worry about precautions.”

We want people to take precautions all the time to make it a norm. Sort of like when you send your kid out on a bicycle: they should be grabbing the helmet and wearing that. It's the same thing for tick bites and mosquito bites. We want you to avoid getting bitten all the time, not just based upon an expert's idea of what the season is going to be like.

Rath: These diseases we mentioned are not going to go away, so there's no such thing as a good tick and mosquito season.

Telford: That's correct, and they're expanding into your very yards in suburbia. Once upon a time, when I first started, when people said that they had ticks in Newton, I would laugh at them, “Oh no. It's only down on the south coast and the islands and the Cape.” But now you can get them well within 128. And so with time, the risk is going to expand into everybody's backyard. So it does bear trying to support initiatives to get people to take precautions all the time when they go outside. And it doesn't have to be going overboard, it can be very simple.

Rath: Well, I want to talk more about that spread you just mentioned, but first let's talk about the precautions that you think people should be taking for a ticks and mosquitoes.

Telford: Plain old repellent. DEET-based repellent or Picaridin work just fine. If they work for mosquitoes, they'll work for ticks. The CDC has a wonderful website where you can look up what they recommend in terms of repellents. And as with anything you buy to apply to yourself — or eat or drink, or in terms of medications — always look at the label and apply it as directed by the label.

Any adverse effects that we see with DEET-based products are because people over-applY. If you apply a simple spritz on your exposed parts, it will do wonders to try to keep the mosquitoes away and ticks as well. Permethrin-treated clothing is what I recommend highly for avoiding tick bites. If you're going to be outside for a while — like working in your backyard in your garden, or going on a hike — at least treat your socks or buy socks that have permethrin integrated into them. Today, you can buy these from Amazon. The cost is certainly not anywhere what it was 10 years ago. It's more in line with what we expect to pay for socks, so there's really no excuse. You can treat the clothing yourself.

Rath: For ticks specifically, if someone finds a tick attached to them, what is the exact protocol? I know that it's changed over time.

Telford: It actually has not. You remove it as soon as possible. Tape it to an index card or something, write the date on it, and then be vigilant about any fevers that appear within the next two weeks.

It is not a medical emergency. There is no need to go to the emergency room. There will be signs of illness that you can use and then seek the advice of a health care provider. Any rash that appears a few days after a tick has been attached, any fever, any malaise, any fatigue: all of those things should be checked out.

It's pretty good advice for the whole summer, if you have any unexplained fever, go get it checked out. But certainly a tick crawling on you or attached to you is not cause to go to the emergency room.

Rath: Well, the part that I hadn't heard of before was saving that tick. You said taping it to an index card?

Telford: Yeah, we've always recommended that, because that way if you do have signs and symptoms, you can take that in with you when you see a health care provider and they'll say, “Oh yeah, that's a deer tick” or “That's a dog tick.” And it may or may not be related to your signs and symptoms.

Rath: You mentioned how we now are seeing ticks in areas that we didn't see them 20 years ago. Do we have a sense of how the threat has spread over the years and what might be behind that?

Telford: The threat has emerged dramatically over 20 years and the causes are complicated. A lot of people point at climate change. It is one of many things that have been affecting the distribution and abundance of ticks and other medically important arthropods.

Population change on its own, too. There are far more people now than there were 10 years ago or 20 years ago. There are far more people living in places where there are deer and mice and squirrels and chipmunks and ticks and mosquitoes.

Not only that, we're more susceptible these days. There are more older people represented in the population, and it's much more likely that if they get bitten, they will come down with illness and thus be reported.

So it's a constellation of many factors. Part of the suburbia story is that we all know about backyard wildlife. We have coyotes coming into the backyard. We have deer eating our ornamentals. And deer are driving the tick borne diseases — and I would argue the mosquito-born diseases, too, to some extent, because most of the mosquitoes that bite humans actually reproduce by feeding on deer. They're the most common source of blood where they live.

Deer management has gotten very, very difficult in suburbia and now you probably see deer along the Charles River.

Rath: Dr. Telford, it's been great talking with you about this very useful information. Thank you so much.

Telford: You are very welcome — and please go out and enjoy the woods. Just take a few simple precautions.