If you are anything like us, you spent a fair bit of time outside over the weekend and are now cursing the mosquitoes that bit up your legs. Because right now, your only options for escaping from these suckers are lighting citronella candles that are useless or spraying terrifying chemicals all over your body. But a group of scientists have come up with a new technology that involves no toxic chemicals and may actually work.
It’s a tiny little patch called Kite that uses non-toxic compounds to screw with mosquitoes’ sense of smell — which is what the mosquito uses to sense where tasty humans are. “If it can’t find you, it can’t bite you,” one researcher explains.
FastCompany visited their lab:
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The scientists are taking a year to do more research and optimize the patch before distributing globally. They say the patches will be affordable in the U.S. and in sub-Saharan Africa — that they’re “preparing Kite Patches for price points in each specific market, focused particularly on making it affordable in developing economies and regions impacted most by mosquito-borne diseases.”
