The Dangers of Deet!

Now let this be a lesson to everyone! While in Borneo we gave our poncho to some fellow travelers, eager to return the favour they insisted we take their spare bottle of mosquito repellent. Running low ourselves we couldn’t refuse. They had bought it at a sports store in England and we discovered it was 100% deet. Now as far as I can recall I have never seen a deet content over 30 in Canada. I packed it aside and saved it for a mozzie infested day. Now comes the kicker! Weeks later in Cairns I opened my pack and pulled out my thick plastic kit bag that was harbouring the deet filled repellent only to find that it had completely eaten apart my bag. All that remained were a few ragged pieces of plastic and the seams. It was like a moth eaten shirt. I was shocked and as I started to remove more items from my bag, I realized it had eaten through half the contents turning them to goo. A plastic container for my duck tape was little more than a blob of slime. I am still in shock as I write this, I can’t imagine what our skin would have looked like if we had put it directly on our skin or what would be left of our clothes! This has caused me to seriously consider any deet products in the future!