SARASOTA, Fla. — The Food and Drug Administration recommends for people to stay protected against diseases like malaria, they need to add mosquito repellent with DEET, to their regimen. However, not everyone can tolerate the smell of DEET and many often have complained of eye or skin irritation. That's why there are many other natural mosquito repellent options registered with the FDA.
One such option is the natural mosquito repellent product a Sarasota woman created from an old family recipe.
Jeanette Miller's family has had a history of deadly mosquito-borne illnesses while living in Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States in the tropical Caribbean. She said the recipe which was passed down to her great aunt is helping to make a difference here in the Tampa Bay area and across the country. She shared the story that inspired her business which she traced back to the 1930s in Puerto Rico where her family was worried about frequent malaria and dengue fever outbreaks that killed many relatives, friends and neighbors.
"Malaria was one of the main reasons for people dying. There were over 75,000 cases and many people died," Miller said.
Among some of the people who died was one of her father's childhood friends who was just 11 years old. Miller said the memory of that incident was imprinted in her father's mind that when he started his own family, he worried about them getting bitten by mosquitoes and infected with an illness.
But Miller said her grandaunt Emma learned a way to keep pesky mosquitoes away with a mixture of several local herbs like lemon grass, eucalyptus, citronella, catnip and lavender. These were all plants scientists have said and research has shown mosquitoes hate.
"She would cut them down. She was barefoot. She would mash them into essential oils and then she would put it on me and she would plaster the whole family so that's memories that I have and it helped prevent us from getting sick," Miller said.
But the little kids in the family hated the oily smelly mixture, refusing to put it on, but Miller said her father remembered how his little friend died and always insisted.
"When we were trying to even complain to him and he used to say 'Just put it on, just put it on, just do it for me. Just put it on, that's it. It's going to protect you,'" she said.
Miller said the pungent homemade repellent mixture proved effective during that time and she was convinced about it when it was tested in the family.
"My mother got very very sick from dengue fever and being in the hospital with her and I saw they had IVs in her and she was really sick. I didn't get it because she had plastered me, so I was OK," she said about her grandaunt's mixture.
When her aunt died six years ago, Miller found her recipe with a note in Spanish that read "Para los mosquitos," which translates to "for the mosquitoes" in English.
With the help of her husband, Dean Miller, who was in the pharmaceutical industry, she reformulated the botanical recipe into Pesky Bug Away Spray, a less smelly and less oily version of the family's mosquito repellent.
With a range of bug repellent products on offer, Pesky Bug Away is currently available in more than 1,200 stores across the county and has thousands of loyal local customers that replenish their stock at local farmers markets in Bradenton, Siesta Key, Coquina Beach, Venice and Lakewood Ranch. The products are also available online.
"I'm going to keep her legacy going and protect like the same way she protected us," Miller said.
As the weather gets hotter and more conducive for mosquitoes to breed, she's hoping it will help keep them away from her neighbors.
"When you think about Puerto Rico, and then now it's coming here to Sarasota. It's scary, it's scary but it's good to be able to know that you'll be able to help people with it, you know, helping them prevent getting bit," Miller said.
According to Miller, Pesky products are all-natural, contain no DEET or chemicals and are safe for children, pets, and pregnant women.
She said it not only works to keep mosquitoes away but also ticks, sand flies, fire ants, hornets and various bothersome and dangerous bugs.