It says in Boing Boing that DEET, the well-known insect repellent, is neurotoxic.
I suppose it must have been the thick end of thirty years ago when my brother and I went to the Isle of Lewis in my old Land-Rover (it was an archaeological thing; I was taking the photos).
The midges on Lewis are perhaps marginally less voracious than those on Skye, but it is a fine distinction. They appeared to be capable of penetrating not only Army sleeping-bags but also the L-R’s canvas tilt. After a couple of days of this one resembles the computer simulations of the state of the impact shield on the Giotto spacecraft after it encountered Halley’s comet; or a particularly pointillist pizza.
We had a bottle of 100% DEET, to which the midges reacted more or less as yoblets on the Falls Road once reacted to CS gas; throwing the canisters back, yelling “More, more”, etc.
However it was our only defence, and so, like whatever it was that that fellow used to advertise on the telly, we splashed it on all over (with some care, because its trichloroethane carrier will dissolve the majority of modern synthetic kit).
My brother got one drop of it on his lower lip, and within a few seconds was exhibiting signs which the more alarmist survival fiend might, sight unseen, be inclined to associate with a mild case of sarin.
How it has taken the French penny so long to drop is remarkable, particularly because the chap in the shop always said that the stuff was ‘only a couple of hydrogen groups’, or some such chemical quackery, ‘away from nerve-gas.’
