Ticks and Tick-Borne Disease for Outdoor Crews

Why this matters

Lawn, landscape, tree, fence, deck, gutter, septic, irrigation, pest and exterior HVAC crews spend the day in exactly the edges ticks live in: the strip of tall grass along a fence line, leaf litter under a deck, the stone wall at the back of the lot. A tick bite is painless and most are never felt. The diseases that follow range from a rash and a course of antibiotics to an illness that kills within days if it is not treated early, and one that leaves a tech unable to eat red meat. Prevention is cheap and boring: treated clothes, a repellent, a two-minute check at the end of the day. The failure is a crew that does none of it because nobody told them which ticks live in their county or how fast they work.

The ticks that matter, and where they live

Ranges are shifting north and outward, especially for the lone star tick, so treat this as the current picture as of 2026 and check CDC's tick maps for your state each spring.

Two field notes on identification. Blacklegged nymphs are the size of a poppy seed and do most of the Lyme transmission, which is why "I'd have seen it" is not true. Lone star adults are aggressive, actively crawl toward people, and the adult female carries a single white spot on her back.

How transmission works, and why the clock matters

Ticks do not jump and do not drop from trees. They quest: climb a grass stem or low brush and hold their front legs out until something brushes past. They usually land low (boots, cuffs) and crawl upward for several hours looking for thin, warm skin before biting. Then they attach and feed for days.

The pathogen does not transfer the moment the tick bites. For Lyme disease, CDC states that in most cases the tick must be attached for 36 to 48 hours or more before the bacteria are transmitted. That window is the whole reason a daily check works: a tick found and removed the same evening has almost always come off before Lyme could move. The window is not universal, though, and the exceptions are why the check is daily rather than every few days:

• Anaplasmosis and some rickettsial diseases can transmit in less than a day.
• Powassan virus can transmit in as little as 15 minutes of attachment. It is rare, mostly in the Northeast and Great Lakes, and serious.

Seasonality follows life stage. Blacklegged nymphs peak from late spring through summer; adults are active in fall and on any winter day warm enough to be above freezing. Lone star ticks are active from early spring into fall. A crew that drops its guard in October in the Northeast is dropping it while adult blacklegged ticks are at their most active.

The protective stack

Each layer catches what the one before misses. None of them alone is enough.

Permethrin-treated work clothes. Permethrin is an insecticide applied to fabric, not skin, and it kills or knocks down ticks that crawl onto treated cloth. Factory-treated garments hold it through many more washes than clothing treated at home with a spray. Treat pants, socks and shoes first, since that is where ticks land. The method, wash life and the cautions (it is toxic to cats while wet) belong to their own card. See related: Treating Work Clothes with Permethrin.

An EPA-registered skin repellent on exposed skin. CDC recommends products registered with EPA containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD) or 2-undecanone. Higher concentration means longer protection, not stronger protection; follow the label for reapplication. Apply sunscreen first and repellent second. Repellent goes on skin and over clothing, never under it.

Clothing habits. Light-colored pants so a crawling tick shows up, pants tucked into socks on brush days, long sleeves when clearing, and boots rather than low shoes in tall grass. It looks silly and it works.

Work habits. Walk the center of a cleared path, not the edge. Do not sit on stone walls, logs or leaf litter for lunch. Keep jackets and gloves off the truck seat until they have been checked.

The end-of-day check and the shower. Check the whole body before or right after leaving the last job, and shower within two hours of coming indoors, which CDC notes is associated with lower Lyme risk and is a good moment to do the check properly. Put dry work clothes in a dryer on high heat for 10 minutes to kill ticks still on them (wet clothes need longer). How to check and how to remove one is its own card. See related: Doing a Tick Check and Removing a Tick Correctly.

Symptoms that need a doctor

Most tick bites cause nothing. What follows is not medical advice; it is the list of signs that mean "go now and tell them about the tick."

• An expanding rash at or near the bite, appearing 3 to 30 days later, often several inches across and growing over days. It is the classic sign of early Lyme disease and appears in most cases, but not all, and it is not always a bullseye.
• Fever, chills, headache, fatigue or muscle and joint aches in the weeks after a bite or a day in tick country, with or without a rash.
• Fever with a spotted rash on the wrists, ankles, palms or soles, or fever and severe headache after a bite in Rocky Mountain spotted fever country. This one is time-critical: CDC stresses that treatment works best started early, within the first days of illness.
• An allergic reaction (hives, swelling, stomach pain, trouble breathing) two to six hours after eating red meat, in someone with lone star tick bites. That pattern is alpha-gal syndrome.

In areas where Lyme disease is common, a clinician may offer a single preventive dose of an antibiotic if a blacklegged tick was attached for 36 hours or more and it has been no more than 72 hours since removal. That is the clinician's call, not the shop's, but it only happens if the tech goes in during that window and brings the facts: date, place, how engorged the tick was, and a photo of it.

The shop's side of it

Make the stack available rather than suggested: permethrin-treated pants or a treating service, repellent on every truck, and ten minutes at day's end for checks and changing out of brush clothes. A crew member who reports a bite gets the date written into the job record, because illness can show up a month later.

Two rules sit around that, both of them state- and size-dependent. Whether a tick-borne illness is a workers' compensation claim is decided under your state's law; report it to your carrier the way you would any injury and let them decide. And a shop that keeps OSHA injury and illness logs under 29 CFR 1904 (generally employers with more than ten employees outside the partially exempt industries) treats a work-related illness that needed prescription medication as generally recordable, since prescription treatment counts as medical treatment beyond first aid. Ask your carrier or a safety consultant where your shop sits on both.

Worked example: two crew members, one week in May

A four-person landscape crew in central Connecticut, the heart of blacklegged tick country, spends Monday clearing brush and leaves along a stone wall at the back of a wooded lot, from about 10:00 to 3:00. All four wear permethrin-treated pants; two also used a picaridin repellent on their arms and necks.

Crew member A does the end-of-day check in the shop bathroom at 4:30. She finds a nymph attached at her waistband. Taking the earliest possible pickup time of 10:00, it has been on her for at most 6.5 hours (10:00 to 4:30). She removes it with fine-tipped tweezers, photographs it beside a coin, and the office writes "nymph, waist, Mon, back lot, about 6.5 h max" into the job note. Six and a half hours is well inside the 36-hour Lyme window. She watches for a rash or fever for 30 days and none comes.

Crew member B skips the check because the crew is behind and he showers late without looking. On Wednesday at 7:00 he finds a swollen tick behind his knee. Counting from the earliest possible Monday pickup at 10:00 to Wednesday at 7:00 is 45 hours (14 hours to midnight Monday, 24 for Tuesday, 7 into Wednesday). It is visibly engorged, consistent with a long attachment. That is past the 36-hour mark, in a high-incidence state, and he removed it at 7:00 Wednesday, so the 72-hour window for asking about a preventive dose runs to 7:00 Saturday.

The call: the office sends B to urgent care that morning with the photo, the date and the location. The clinician decides; whatever they decide, B now knows to watch for a rash or fever through mid-June and to mention the bite if either appears.

What would have changed the answer: in the Southeast, the same engorged tick is more likely a lone star tick, which does not transmit Lyme. The visit still happens, because ehrlichiosis and the spotted fevers do not respect a 36-hour window, but the clinician is weighing a different list.

The difference between them was not luck. Both picked up a tick along the same wall on the same afternoon, and B's was almost certainly findable on Monday evening. One person spent two minutes looking.

How to check you got this right

• Ask each crew lead which ticks are common in your county. If nobody knows, look it up together on CDC's maps this spring.
• Count the trucks with repellent and spare permethrin-treated socks in them.
• Look at last season's records: was every reported bite logged with a date and place? A bite with no date is a bite nobody can reason about in a month.

References

• CDC, Ticks: geographic distribution, preventing tick bites, Lyme disease transmission (36 to 48 hours of attachment), symptoms, and post-exposure prophylaxis criteria
• EPA, repellent registration and the active ingredients CDC recommends
• OSHA, 29 CFR 1904 Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (medical treatment beyond first aid)
• See related: Doing a Tick Check and Removing a Tick Correctly
• See related: Treating Work Clothes with Permethrin