The most reliable way to kill a tick is to drop it into a small container of rubbing alcohol, which kills it within minutes. You can also seal it tightly in tape, trap it in a sealed bag, or flush it down the toilet. The one thing you should never do is crush a tick between your fingers, which can expose you to the same pathogens the tick may carry.
Best Methods for Killing a Single Tick
If you’ve just pulled a tick off your skin or found one crawling on you, rubbing alcohol is the fastest and most effective option. Drop the tick into a small cup or jar with enough alcohol to submerge it. The tick will die quickly, and the alcohol also preserves it in case you later want to identify the species (though not for lab testing, which has different requirements).
If you don’t have rubbing alcohol handy, wrap the tick tightly in a strip of clear tape, folding the tape over itself so the tick is completely sealed inside. This suffocates and immobilizes it. You can also place the tick in a sealed plastic bag or container and throw it away, or simply flush it down the toilet. All of these are recommended by the National Institutes of Health as safe disposal methods.
Why You Shouldn’t Crush, Burn, or Smother a Tick
Squeezing a tick between your fingernails might seem like the simplest solution, but it can push the tick’s gut contents onto your skin, potentially transferring bacteria or viruses. This is especially risky if you have any small cuts or openings on your hands.
If the tick is still attached to your skin, don’t try to kill it in place with a lit match, nail polish, or petroleum jelly. These “folk remedies” are meant to irritate the tick into backing out on its own, but they often cause the opposite problem. As Mayo Clinic parasitologist Bobbi Pritt explains, heat or chemical irritants can cause the tick to regurgitate its stomach contents into your skin, increasing the chance of disease transmission. The correct approach is to grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible with fine-tipped tweezers and pull straight up with steady, even pressure. Kill it after removal, not while it’s still embedded.
Killing Ticks on Clothing
Ticks that hitch a ride on your clothes after a hike can survive for hours or even days in your laundry basket. Washing alone won’t necessarily kill them. The CDC recommends tumbling dry clothes in a dryer on high heat for 10 minutes to kill ticks. This works because ticks are extremely vulnerable to drying out, and the combination of heat and low humidity in a dryer is lethal.
If your clothes are damp or wet, you’ll need additional drying time. And if you need to wash the clothes first, use hot water. Cold and medium-temperature water will not kill ticks.
Why Ticks Die From Drying Out
Ticks depend on environmental moisture to survive. Unlike most insects, they can actually absorb water vapor directly from humid air, but only when humidity is high enough. Research published in the Journal of Medical Entomology found a sharp survival threshold between 75% and 82% relative humidity for blacklegged tick nymphs. At 82% humidity, about 60% of ticks survived even with constant exposure. Drop that to 75%, and survival plummeted to just a handful out of a hundred. At 40% to 60% humidity, most ticks desiccated within 48 hours.
This is why ticks thrive in shady, leaf-littered areas and struggle in open, sunny lawns. It’s also why the dryer works so well and why a tick stuck to a piece of tape or sealed in a dry bag will eventually die even without alcohol.
What if You Want the Tick Tested?
If you’re concerned about Lyme disease or other tick-borne illnesses, you may want to save the tick for identification or pathogen testing rather than destroying it. The process for preservation depends on what you plan to do with it.
For species identification, rubbing alcohol works fine. But if you want the tick tested for pathogens at a state or commercial lab, do not put it in alcohol, formalin, or saline, as these can interfere with testing. Instead, place the tick in a sealed container or plastic bag and keep it in the refrigerator or freezer. Check with your local health department for submission instructions, as requirements vary by state.
Do Natural Tick Sprays Work?
Products containing cedar oil and other plant-based ingredients are marketed as natural tick killers for yards and clothing. Their effectiveness is inconsistent. A CDC review of these “minimum risk” products found that their ability to kill blacklegged ticks ranged from comparable to chemical pesticides all the way down to nearly useless, depending on the specific product. Professional pest control companies often avoid offering natural tick treatments for this reason. If you’re treating a yard or outdoor area, conventional tick control products with proven active ingredients are more reliably effective.