DEET Blocks Bugs From Smelling Humans as “Food”

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
March 13, 2008
The popular bug spray known as DEET blocks insects from picking up the smells on humans that would otherwise register as “food,” a new study says.

DEET temporarily destroys an insect’s sense of smell by hindering the function of certain odor receptors.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture invented DEET in 1958, but at the time no one fully understood how it worked.

“They found it more or less by trial and error,” Vosshall said.