Watkins Insect Repellent is one of my very best sellers in the summer. It is an all round great Watkins seller for everyone. Many times I have been asked if it is safe to use on kids due to the 28% deet in the product. Here is the answer.

DEET
safe to slather on kids: experts

TORONTO (CP)Parents anxious to protect fheir children against West Nile virus may be able to safely use DEET more frequently than Health Canada recommends, a medical article rushed to print Tuesday suggests.
Further, the authors say DEET-based mosquito repellents are safe for use by pregnant women and women who are breastfeedingand may even be safe to use, sparingly, on children under six months old. Health Canada does not recommend the use of DEET-based products on children less than a half-year old.
"People have to use common sense and judgment," said lead author Dr, Gideon Koren, director of the Motherisk program at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Childirn.
"If you have a small baby in an infested area... I would be compelled to suggest that you should strongly consider using it, even on young kids if you find them to be attacked."

The article, a review of the existing scientific and safety data on DEET, was rushed to print Tuesday by the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It was published on the journal's Web site and will
be featured in a future issue of the journal.

It was written by Koren, Dr. Doreen Matsui from Children's Hospital of Western Ontario and Dr. Benoit Bailey from St Justine Hospital in Montreal.
Koren said that while some members of the public remain reluctant to use DEET based products, especially on children, the chemical's safety record is almost unparalleled. It has been on the market for nearty 50 years and has been used by millions of peopfe the world over with few adverse effects.

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"We have to realize there are not very many chemicals with such huge safety data," said Koren, an expert in clinical pharmacology and toxicology.
"Except for people who ingest it as a suicide attempt or poisoning attempt or accidentally by a small child, this agent has been used (safely) now on millions and millions of people. And no real signal (of risk) came out."
Koren and his co-authors reviewed all the available data on products formulated using N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide, or DEET, And though concern has been expressed over the years that children were at greater risk than adults of having adverse reactions to DEET, the evidence didn't bear it out, they said.
A large study published last year based on data collected by the American Association of Poison Control Centers actually refutes the idea. Young children who were accidentally exposed to DEET were more likely to have less severe outcomes than adults, they found.

One of the ongoing concerns about the use of DEET products on children is the suggestion it can trigger seizures. But Koren and his colleagues could find only 10 reports of seizures in children after application of DEET products in 50 years of use. In none of those cases did the treating physicians do the necessary work to rule out the possibility the seizure might have been caused by something else.

If exposure to the chemical actually prompts seizures, one would have expected to see thousands of such reports over the years, not 10, Koren said.

"I'm not blind to the issue of perceptions. But I am concerned that some parents may not treat a child, even in the cottage country, because of Health Canada's recommendation.

"So these parents should know that the seizures were not proven."
Koren said the authors could find nothing in the data to support Health
Canada's suggestion that parents should only use one application a day of DEET products on children aged six months to two years. That only offers two to three hours of mosquito protection, the article says, leaving children unprotected if they are outdoors for longer. Also, any child who went swimming would lose the protection.

Under such circumstances a second application of DEET might be warranted, the authors say.

A study of pregnant women, in their second and third trimester, that was done in Thailand found no adverse effects in women who used DEET products while they were pregnant.

No neurological or development problems were detected in their offspring either.

Nor is there any evidence breastfeeding poses a risk to an infant if its mother is protecting herself from West Nile virus by using DEET products, Koren said.
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