Went Geo-caching last weekend and my wife came down with a nice case of poison oak. Yes, you can get it from just the stems. She was wearing leather gloves to dig around in the dirt, but I know that she got the oil on the outside and the inside of the gloves. After all, she has it in some pretty interesting places that only her hands would be touching while out caching
Her clothes can just be washed in hot water, but short of throwing the gloves away, is there a way to remove the oil from the gloves without destroying them?
Dry-cleaning solvents may remove poison oak oil, but you should be very careful to tell the dry cleaners that the gloves are contaminated with poison oak, and explain the consequences of touching poison oak in case they aren’t aware. (Hopefully they know what to do when clothes aren’t safe to touch.) Even so, I can’t guarantee it would work and I doubt the dry cleaners could be sure either. You could probably also remove it by treating the gloves with a solvent of an appropriate pH, but unless they were very expensive gloves, it’s probably best to throw them away.
