PROTECT YOURSELF FROM TICK BITES
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Stay away from bush, weeds, woods, and other tick habitats.
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Use a tick repellents, such as DEET containing insect repellents.
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Wear long pants and shirts that fit snugly at the ankles and wrists.
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Check yourself and your companions often when in tick infected areas.
 Ixodes scapularis, tick vector for Lyme disease |
 Female Dermacentor variabilis, American brown dog tick |
(Photos courtesy CDC Public Health Image Library) |
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Removing an Attached Tick
Remove the tick as soon as possible after discovering. The best way to remove an attached tick is as follows:
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If possible, use blunt curved forceps, tweezers or a special tick removal device. If you use your fingers, cover them with rubber gloves, waxed paper, plastic or paper toweling. (Do not use vaseline, matches or cigarettes.)
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Place the tips of the tweezers or edges of the device around the tick's mouthparts where they enter the skin.
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With forceps or tweezers, remove the tick with a steady pull away from the skin - do not jerk or twist the tick.
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Take great care not to crush or puncture the body of the tick or to get any fluids from the tick on you.
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Dispose of the tick by sealing it in plastic bag and throwing it in the trash.
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If you wish to keep the tick alive, place it in a sealable container, such as a bag or vial, with moist paper and store it in the refrigerator to give to a physician for examination if a tick-carried disease is suspected.
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After you have removed the tick, disinfect your skin with alcohol or povidone iodine and wash hands with soap and water.
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Contact your health care provider if you have difficulty removing a tick or becoming ill following a tick exposure.
From: "Ticks and what you can do about them", 1998. by Roger Drummond. Wilderness Press, Berkley. p 58-59.
Tick-borne diseases include: Tick-borne Spotted Fevers, Tularemia, Lyme Disease, Colorado Tick Fever, Ehrlichiosis, Relapsing Fever, Q Fever, Babesiosis