BETITEX · Development of sustainable textiles against bugs

The aim of this project is to create textiles capable of providing the user with protection in front of bugs such as ticks and bedbugs.On the one hand, ticks are important vectors of human and animal diseases, besides causing hurts and irritant bites. Currently, these diseases are more usual than past years, mainly due to: climate change and so continuously new pathogens transmitted by ticks. Ticks can be found mostly in East Europe and Central Europe.Regarding to bedbugs, a wide range of explanations have been proposed for the increase, including climate change, increased human movement, changes in insecticide use patterns, and reduced insecticide susceptibility of the bedbugs. Current evidence indicates that bedbugs are making a comeback in Europe.Although ticks and bedbugs are present in different environments, they have a similar behaviour, they can be attacked by the same kind of biocides and both of them are carriers of diseases and can cause irritating bites.Nowadays the most used method is using a repellent-spray. These sprays contain biocides responsible of providing with protection to the user. There are a lot of biocides that can generate repellence and/or that can work as an insecticide. However, not all of them are accepted by the European Biocides Directive (98/8/EC) due to their toxicity and their environmental impact.With this project, the current problems and lacks of obtaining protection against bugs (ticks and bedbugs) will be solved.As a result, the associations of the consortium can take advantage of the R&D tasks carried out by the Technological Centres and so, offering to the SMEs solutions for getting protective textiles for ticks and bedbugs attack mainly focused on two sectors: PPEs (outside workers) and home/linen textiles (indoor fabrics).