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i would suggest to remove the passage about the mode of action of deet.this is speculaton and not proven. based on the NOR guidelines i cant say its wrong, but my data suggest that it might be not correct (blood substitute with ATP as sole attractant is also 'protected' by DEET (while there is no lactic acid...).   

Removed the ""natural alternatives"" or actually added a question mark. Added refs to show that these ""alternatives"" do not work. Also removed various distinctions between ""natural"" and ""synthetic"". There is no difference between a molecule synthesised chemically and naturally. Last: DEET is a repellant, NOT an insecticide.  

Made new page on DEET, using material gleaned largely from the CDC and EPA pages, and a couple of studies on health effects and insect-repellant effectiveness (from Google).  Although a bunch of the pages say one should be careful only to wear DEET when necessary, not under clothing, etc., they don't spell out why they're concerned.  I'm guessing DEET is chemically nasty (is it an organo-phosphate?), and so may have carcinogenic or other unfortunate properties.  If someone knows (and ideally can show) what these suspected effects might be, I think a short (hopefully rational) addition to the DEET page is called for.   15:03, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What was Charlie Coll's contribution? Some Canadians think he invented the stuff.  22:13, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is it a poison? If so, what is the LD_50? Is it liquid or a gas or solid (at room temp and standard conditions)? Thanks.  

As mentioned in the article, its effect on the human body is not yet fully understood; it's ?gay? (eh? - Ed) and not an organophosphate (as seen from the chemical formula image) but the effect seen with leeches provides a clue as to what might happen if enough of it entered the body. The effect on leeches is added from my own experience, using a concentrated DEET stick (like a deodorant applicator) and only needing to touch the leech for it to convulse off. It's a liquid at rtp, as far as I can tell.  10:10, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Be careful adding from your own experience. That basically violates the Wikipedia:No original research policy. But that's simple to avoid, since if you've seen the effect, most likely someone else has. Wikipedia needs to be a secondary source, citing other published sources. So find a published source that finds the same thing, and the addition would be much better. Also it is liquid, as long as the repellant product bottles that say they are 100% deet really are. Also, just eyeballing from it's structure, liquid looks about right. I read a bunch of studies on DEET, and they all basically say it is safe as far as they can tell, but avoid overexposure as much as possible. A very small percentage of the time, some people (12 if I recall the study correctly, out of a large population) have a reaction to DEET. Basically the 60 years it has been used and the large amount of usage is strong evidence that at least the stuff is not really really nasty. So the article looks pretty accurate in that respect. -  Talk 12:00, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
Whoops, didn't know about that. Thanks. I'll leave it in for the moment and will try to remember to do backup research when I get home; if anyone believes that the information is unreliable enough please feel free to mark it out, and I'll just have to find a better source than word of mouth from my parents at the time ;)
Later: Researched. Found a fair bit of anecdotal evidence but not enough hard evidence to keep my previous addition in. Also a 1998 study shows DEET may actually accelerate absorption through the skin, so going to revert the edit. Putting in a link with lots of detail I found to make myself feel better ;)  16:38, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No worries. Now you know and can make great contributions. There are plenty of things to help out with, so do some research and add what you can. If you don't feel like doing that, just fix formatting errors and help link all the related concepts, etc. -  Talk 17:37, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

I would change a couple of the wordings from ""pesticide"" to ""repellent"" or ""chemical"" so it does not imply that DEET functions as a pesticide. There seems to be a lot of confusion about that on various sites so perhaps it would be