BIG Freeze – Northern Beaches Ticks
Simple Instruction loves promoting a great product and wants all Northern Beaches people to know about the recommended way to use First Aid and remove ticks. Please remember that child care workers HLTAID004 are not able to remove ticks or splinter in child care centres.
Scientist and gardener invents product to snap freeze ticks
Julie Cross, Manly Daily
November 19, 2017 12:30am
New research backs ‘freeze, don’t squeeze’
Mum almost dies after eating meat pie
A WOMAN who has suffered multiple tick bites while visiting the northern beaches believes she has invented a product which can freeze and kill them safely.
Peggy Douglass, 61, said her experience with ticks drove her to create a product to deal with the potentially life-threatening parasite.
Having trained in microbiology and chemistry, working for the Australian National University and then in food regulation bodies in the Commonwealth Government, she devised a pocket-sized solution, called Tick Tox.
It’s a simple aerosol can the size of a small deodorant tube. With one squirt it can snap freeze the tick.
Peggy Douglass has found herself covered in ticks after visits to family living on the northern beaches. Now she has produced a product called Tick Tox to kill them. Picture: Adam Yip
“In the old days I used to just pull them out,” Ms Douglass said.
“Sometimes I’d have 20 or more after working in my aunt’s garden in Palm Beach.
“Once I went home with 43.
“But having heard the advice that we should ‘freeze it, not squeeze it’, I looked around but found nothing that was specifically for ticks.”
At the moment tick experts advise people to use a freezing agent from the chemist.
The only ones available are for other conditions such as warts or tags.
Ms Douglass, who lives in Canberra, said hers is essentially the same product as those, but the applicator is smaller and more precise.
Dr Andy Ratchford, emergency director at Mona Vale Hospital, recently revealed results from a study looking at the best way to remove a tick.
He said results showed killing the tick by freezing it while it was still embedded in the skin was the best course of action and could potentially save a life.
Dr Andy Ratchford at Mona Vale Hospital Emergency department. Picture: Adam Yip
He said the research proves it was safer than using other methods such as pulling it out while still alive with tweezers or your fingertips.
“In general, we found that four out of five people who removed the ticks without killing them first suffered an allergic reaction, mostly it was a local reaction, but in some cases it was life threatening,” Dr Ratchford said.
He said in comparison, only one out of ten patients who killed ticks in place by freezing them first, suffered a reaction.
Allergy expert professor Sheryl van Nunen, who first linked ticks to meat allergies, estimates that more than 1000 people on the northern beaches have developed a meat allergy caused by a tick bite, while others have developed an allergy to ticks themselves.
Prof van Nunen said she could not comment on the product Tick Tox, but would be looking at it with other members of Tick Induced Allergies Research and Awareness, TIARA, at their next meeting.
Tick Tox is currently on sale online at ticktox.com.au or from chemists in Avalon and Mona Vale.
Peggy Douglass with her product Tick Tox. Picture: Adam Yip.
HOW TO REMOVE A TICK
1. For adult ticks, use a freezing agent, containing ether, such as WART-Off. Apply five presses of the treatment half a centimetre above the tick and wait for the tick to fall off.
If it doesn’t, reapply. Seek medical help if a tick, dead or alive, doesn’t drop off.
2. For tiny ticks, such as larvae and nymphs, use a permethrin-based cream such as Lyeclear. Leave on for one to three hours and they should fall off.
3. For more information on how to prevent and remove ticks go to tiara.org.au.
Book in for a Simple Instruction First Aid or CPR course for November, December, and January 2018. We have Provide First Aid HLTAID003, Provide CPR HLTAID001 at the Dee Why RSL. Book online
