I tried to eradicate it this weekend. I used garden gloves, and I wore long sleeves and long pants. But reading about how to do it online, after I was done (I do this sort of thing backwards all the damn time), I see recommendations about wearing two layers of rubber gloves and several layers of clothing, goggles, and rubber boots, and gently pulling on the vines to uproot them and stuffing them into doubled-up plastic trash bags. Removing the clothes carefully without touching anything and then laundering them immediately, while going to shower in cool water with no soap.
I used regular garden gloves, ripped those bastards up like I wanted them to die, and flung them into a huge pile. I went inside, took off the clothes to toss them in the wash, and then showered in normal water with soap. I was paranoid that I was going to wake up this morning covered in itchy blisters, despite the fact that the little itches I am feeling all over my body are probably completely psychosomatic and not actually the start of a poison ivy rash.
I’m looking online to see whether I’m in the clear because it’s almost 24 hours later now and I’m not noticing anything on my skin, and some pages say it can take up to a week for the rash to show up. When can I stop freaking out about every mosquito bite, thinking it’s the start of a huge poison ivy blister reaction? Does it make a difference that I have never (that I know of) been exposed to poison ivy before?
I thought the poison ivy reaction was contact dermatitis, which happens fairly quickly after exposure - why would it take a week for the reaction to become apparent?
I’ve never heard of it taking a week for the first symptoms. If you were actually exposed to poison ivy, you’d be at least starting to itch within the first hour. An actual rash might take a little longer to develop, but even that I’d be highly surprised if it took longer than a day.
Also worthy of note: Some people just plain aren’t sensitive to urishiol, and some perfectly innocuous plants have evolved to look very much like poison ivy. So it’s possible that you were never at risk in the first place.
First off, you may not be allergic to it at all. One out of four people isn’t. (Most people who say they aren’t allergic either haven’t encountered it, or haven’t been sensitized to it yet, and apparently urushiol is really bad about inducing allergic sensitivity.)
Second, you may be only a little allergic. If you’ve been in contact with it only once or twice before (or never), or you’re one of the lucky people who just don’t break out very badly in response to it, then you’re set for this time.
Personal example: husband and I are both from Southeastern US - LOTS of poison ivy, poison sumac, and poison oak. Husband cannot even walk in an area where poison ivy is, because the oils from the plant get on *other *plants, and he gets horrible pustule-nasty rashes from it that last nearly two weeks.
I have pulled the stuff up with my bare hands as a child, and didn’t get anything. Even now (I try not to touch it directly, but still get ‘swatted’ by leaves and branches in the face and neck sometimes) I am much less careful of it than anyone else I know, and I still don’t get blisters - I’ll get a little rash where it “bit” me, but that’s it.
I have actually *given *poison ivy to my husband before, because he used a hand-towel to dry sweat off his face after I did the same. I didn’t break out even on that occasion, but he got blisters on his lips! I felt really bad about that. Urushiol-induced contact dermatitis - Wikipedia (general purpose cite)
I’ve never heard of problems from poison ivy taking more than 24 hours to show up. Also, pulling up poison ivy plants is useless. As long as the root remains, plants can grow again, and you are unlikely to pull up the entire root. The way to take care of it is with herbicides. They can be sprayed over an area, or the leaves of individual plants can be coated. You can use a piece of cardboard to mask out other plants if you spray it on. The herbidice will kill the entire plant, including roots. BrushBGone is one brand name, and there are several. Simple weed and grass killers will not do the job.
The reason to shower in cool water and no soap is to keep the urushiol from spreading. You want the water to wash it off your body. Hot water thins the oil allowing it to spread, and opens your pores allowing the evil stuff to penetrate your skin. Soap will just move the stuff around your body.
Allergic reactions to urushiol vary among people, and through the lives of people. You can show no reaction to poison ivy for years, and then one day have a severe reaction to exposure. Some people claim that eating a poison ivy leaf occasionally will keep you from developing an allergic reaction. I don’t know if that has ever been proven to be effective, but it sounds like a stupid idea to me.
Also, don’t burn poison ivy, the urushiol can become airborne, and cause severe reactions in people who inhale it.
I’m pretty sure that stuff is authentic poison ivy. My neighbors warned me about its presence when I started working on the yard last year, and they’re pretty avid gardeners who would probably know the stuff when they saw it. I’d send the photo in someplace for a definitive ID if I knew who to send it to. But either way, I’ll try to be more careful with it in the future, just in case my luck runs out. If it is poison ivy, and I’m not reacting, I’m seriously surprised. I have a lot of allergies, notably to juniper and fir trees, so I usually assume an irritant is going to irritate the hell out of my skin. Oh, and I know not to burn it, don’t worry.
I’ll be going to the store today to find some hardcore weed killer. I did a decent job getting roots up, using a “garden claw” and pulling up as much as I could, but I know there’s no way I got all of it, so nuking it from orbit seems to be the way to go.
This thread reminds me of the situation I have a hard time comprhending. Apparently some people have difficulty identifying poison ivy. I can pick it out at a glance. The slightly reflective dark green color of the leaves seems like a warning from mother nature to stay away. The three leaf formation is common, but not always apparent, but the color of the leaves is a dead give-away. Maybe be my funny blue-green color discernment makes this easy for me, but I’m surprised at the number of people who claim they can’t identify poison ivy. Does anybody really have this problem, or is it an excuse for a lack of caution?
a herbicide containing glyphosate works OK. it does kill new plant growth of a very broad range of plants so you need to only put it on what you want to be killed. it toxicity to people is very low and so it is one of the safest garden chemicals to use. poison ivy is a tough plant and may come back from roots, it spreads underground so there may be new plants appearing. it takes about a week to kill. you may need to retreat. it does kill any plant you get it on so you may not want to use a wide spray, you can paint it on leaves (a dishwashing sponge on a handle with detergent reservoir works good for this).
You can kill it off with stuff like Weed Be Gone, but it is tough. As for your first exposure, My understanding is you never have an allergic reaction to anything the first time. It is additional exposures after your body learns to recognize it. So continue to respect it. As mentioned, sensitivity does vary. I have very little trouble with it. It was quite common where I grew up and I never had it until I was tramping around in a different patch of woods when I was 21. My sister never got it until she was 40, and that was after picking wild strawberries in the same patch as she had for years.
My husband can get poison ivy from looking at a picture of it online, or so it seems, I can pull it up with my bare hands and practically roll around in it naked and nothing happens. He is so allergic to it he can go from scattered tiny blisters to enraged raised pussy red patches in a matter of hours. It is to the point where if he is planning on working out in our woods, he goes to the doctor ahead of time and gets prednisone and aterax and boros solution before working. It gets real ugly if he waits.
One time he was pustulent, had been issued calamine lotion and used it:smack: so he was pustulent, scabby white and flaky and we had an SCA event to go to. He decided to go as a leper, wrapped gauze loosely around his arms and legs to sort of cover some of the nasty patches, set out a blanket to work on, a begging bowl and a lepers bell. He made 35 cents that day =)
my favorite poison ivy cure:
Take a long, long shower using dishwashing liquid instead of soap.
It works for me, and I’m very sensitive to poison ivy.
My theory for why it works: dish liquid is designed to remove food & vegetable oils. Now,yeah, I know…poison ivy is not a vegetable; but it is a plant that gives off oils.
Anyway, it works for me–even several hours after I have touched poison ivy
Dishwasher detergent may be better at encapsulating the oil than common soaps. There are several substances sold specifically for this purpose. You best bet is cool water without soap used first to get as much oil as possible off of you. After that, stick with what works for you.
My favorite solution: Don’t touch poison ivy in the first place.
Are you sure? Have you ever tested this ability against some definitive test? It could just as well be that you’re consistently identifying some other plant as poison ivy, in addition to the real stuff. How would you know? False negatives would be pretty obvious, as you’d get a rash from them, but false positives would presumably go undetected, since if you think it’s poison ivy, you’re not going to touch it to be sure.
I think the oil in poison ivy would count as a vegetable oil, perhaps more of an essential oil than what a chemist would call a drying oil. Many oils come from the seed, soy, corn, coconut, etc. I think walnut oil comes from the husks and citrus oils from the rinds.
This story may not belong on SD, no cite available. The Chinese don’t get poison ivy. Before Nixon’s visit, they spiffed up the hotel including painting all the toilet seats with paint made from poison ivy oil, maybe from the berries. Many of the Americans had an embarrassing itch.
That’s funny, I can pick out poison ivy fairly easily but I would never describe the leaves as dark green. Maybe poison oak is darker, but the plant I always identify as poison ivy is relatively light green.
While this is somewhat true, urushiol sensitivity is not like many other allergies as it is not a histamine reaction. That’s also why it’s a delayed response. It is something that can get worse over time or with more exposure.
A cousin of mine inadvertently inhaled a dose of smoke when a neighbor was burning the stuff. This cousin was apparently hyper-sensitive and from what I was told, his survival was in doubt for “some time.”
As a point of reference, I got into a bit of the ivy the other day - I was pulling weeds with abandon and in bundling them up, found ONE sprig among what I’d pulled, so while I was wearing long sleeves and garden gloves, I went in and washed up carefully.
This morning I found a small patch of rash on my forearm, which I only noticed because it itched after I took a hot shower. So, about 36 hours from exposure to noticeable rash.
Poison Ivy (Rhus) is a delayed hypersensitivity reaction, not an immediate type like most other contact reactions. The response is mediated by T-cells rather than antibodies and typically takes days to appear after exposure (and can then come out over several days). A week would be unusually long, but not unheard of.
