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Main
Stems
Reproduction
Foliage
Risk Management
Biochemistry
Anecdotes
Bibliography
Appendices
Dermatology
Anacardiaceae
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Cover Photo
Photo by Jane Wilzbach
That is Tom’s knee!
Tom and I were
in a crew wrestling rocks for a staircase. I
had just cut a ¾ inch thick root with my
McCleod. Several days later he wrote:
“When I looked
at the pants I was wearing…they looked like
I had gotten careless with black paint.
There were a couple of 1 ½ inch lines of
black that are ¼ inch wide. In addition
there are half a dozen blotches that look
like ink was spilled and splattered. The
black penetrated thru to the inside of the
blue jeans. Curiously, the majority of these
occur on the left knee and below the right
knee – the 2 areas where the major rash
outbreak occurred. So, it appears that my
exposure was due to direct contact with the
broken root and not indirect contact thru
contaminated soil.”
The Dissemination of Seed
Examples of the role birds play in the
dissemination of poison-oak.
The Noxious Neighbor
In South Carolina, where I lived for
nineteen years, there was a tall hedge on
the left edge of our back yard. I learned
that once a year it paid to clean out that
hedge because trash trees would start
growing there and occasionally a little
poison-ivy.
Across the street, Marion had pine trees in
her front yard. And right against the base
of one of those trees a little poison-ivy
started growing.
Two years later there was poison-ivy in the
hedge after six months. And a year after
that there was poison-ivy every two months.
So I checked Marion’s plant. I found the
vine was forty feet up the pine and five
inches in diameter!
I sawed the vine. It was another year before
I found a little poison-ivy underneath the
hedge again.
Bombs Away
It was August 25 and the babies had all
fledged. However, someone big was still
using the nest – there was whitewash
underneath the tree. And in amongst the
whitewash was the only poison-oak we saw
that day.
Recognition
Siblings
“I’ve never had trouble with
poison-oak, all my life. But my brother has.
Summers, we used to go to religious camp;
we’d run the fields, and down by the creek. This year my
brother was 12 or 14 – somewhere in there – we didn’t notice
anything unusual, but he got into it. By the time we got home,
his face was round like the moon and his eyes were just slits.
Mom sent him over to his best friend’s
house, and the friend’s mother didn’t know who he was.
Needless to say, my brother was pretty upset, and didn’t go
back to that camp!”
This anecdote illustrates several points:
1. The
siblings differ in their reaction to poison-oak juice. The
reaction to poison-oak is hereditary. Excepting identical
siblings, that sensitivity varies, like all other
characteristics.
2. The
age he got his first rash was in the typical 5 to 15 year old
range. That’s when kids start exploring their environment
without close adult supervision.
3. He
was unaware of the possible danger, and as a result did
nothing to limit his exposure.
4.
Therefore, his first reaction was serious.
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Too Sensitive
A D-Day survivor told me: “They assigned me to
the Infantry. We went on maneuvers, and after one I broke out
in a rash. I didn’t know anything about poisonous plants. But
one of the medics says: ‘Shucks, man! You’ve got poison-ivy.’
and showed me what it looked like. After that, each time we
went out I’d pick some and rub it all over me. Pretty soon
they decided I was too sensitive.”
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The Wicked
Stepfather
A
young man told me: “My brother and I were about five and seven
years old. And we be playing in the woods. One day he needed
to go to the bathroom, and he used the wrong substitute for
toilet paper! He was in bad shape for a while. Well, we had a
mean stepfather. And we decided to rub poison-ivy in his
underpants. We thought it would give him a fit, but nothing
happened. Turned out he wasn’t sensitive!”
The stepfather
reacted very differently from the boys because he was not
related by blood.
Kid’s Stuff
I
grew up in rural New Hampshire. Every spring I broke out
between my fingers. That’s how us kids knew when to start
wearing work gloves.
More
daring was picking the first ivy. After several dandelions
were showing, the older kids would lead us around the edge of
the playground. We’d squeeze the fresh red leaves between our
fingers, and smear the juice across our hands. Then I’d run to
the bathroom and wash it off! Later in the year this would
have broken me out.
Risk Management
Gloves Off
In March of 1999 I decided it was
time to clean the black stains off my first pair of pretty
blue gauntlet gloves. I soaked them in Tide, Clorox Blue and
hot water. Then figuring they must be safe now, I scrubbed the
outsides with bare hands, using soaps and solvents. Didn’t
change one stain! Got the rash between my fingers, though.
That’s when I decided to buy two more pair.
My Gloves
I am moderately
sensitive, like 60% of people. Therefore, I offer my routines
for limiting exposure to poison-oak as a starting point for
others.
Leather gloves are easily penetrated by
urushiols. They make my hands itch the second time I use them
to hold and pull poison-oak.
I fell in love with
neoprene gauntlet gloves early in my work with poison-oak.
Here’s my first pair, just before they got thrown away:
I always wore cotton liners inside of
them. I’d put the liners on, and then pull the gauntlets on by
the cuffs. Removing them I’d pull one gauntlet off, keeping
the liner on, and then pull the other gauntlet off by the
fingers. I used them two years, before they became too hot to
handle.
Here are the cotton liners. Eventually,
I felt safe tearing poison-oak out by its roots with this
combination!
Later on, I tried using neoprene gloves
by themselves, which gave me greater dexterity and was cooler.
However, I found that California Blackberry thorns pierced
them, transmitting just enough poison-oak sap to make my hands
itch. So, for pulling poison-oak I’m using the
combination; when cutting poison-oak I wear just the
gauntlet gloves.
Handling contaminated tools I get enough
protection wearing just the liners. When my hands begin to
itch I launder them. I do this several times before I throw
the liners away.
Biochemistry
Skin Injuries
Scratched
Jim was descending a steep bank near a telephone pole, when
his feet suddenly slipped out from underneath him. As he
skidded down the bank he grabbed the pole. It was covered with
poison-oak. His arm was scraped, but he was otherwise OK.
Jim had never gotten poison-oak He wasn’t worried. He went on
working, and showered five hours later. Jim got the rash where
he’d been scraped.
It’s been years since that happened. He hasn’t any more
trouble.
Stuck
Mike works full time out-of-doors. He is sensitive to
poison-oak. He often has rashes on his arms, especially in the
gap between his sleeves and gloves.
Mike was clearing brush, and was stabbed in the wrist by a
poison-oak twig. “I ought to clean that up!” he thought.
Thirty-five minutes later he remembered again, and did so.
That night he was awoken by painful throbbing of his arm. Red
streaks were coursing up his arm.
Wrecked
A boy was
riding his bike in a creek, hit a rock, and got thrown into a
poison-oak bush. He reacted so severely, he had to be
hospitalized!
To prevent
these serious reactions a routine has been developed:
IMMEDIATELY wash the wound; drinking water is fine. Blot dry
with a clean cloth, for example a shirt tail. Seal the wound
with sun block. And cover it with a bandage.
Alaska
In July 1999 I visited Alaska with
my youngest son. Just before we left I got another
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: permission to dig out
the entire root system of a full-grown poison-oak! A car
had lost control, left the road and sheared the top off
an eight-foot-high plant. The root, at soil level, was
six inches in diameter. I cleared the ground for five
feet in every direction. Soon, I was stripped to a T
shirt, and reaching into a five foot deep hole from
which a three inch tap root disappeared. My arm brushed
the soil.
Two
days later, in lower British Columbia, my arm broke out.
I scrubbed the rash with Tecnu, and the rash cleared. On
day seven, I became aware of a tingling of my legs just
below the knees. The adjustment strings of my gaiters
flipped around in the brush; I had never had this
problem, before. On day eleven, my hands began to itch
when I drove, and we had to buy a steering wheel cover!
With each reaction my sensitivity had been ramping
up. (Fortunately, since then my sensitivity has dropped
again.)
CHRONIC REACTIONS
Months
A woman reports that her two children got bad cases of
poison-oak; she worried that they would not recover. Her son
had a plaque of abnormal skin for two months. Her daughter had
a plaque for five months.
Just Poison-Oak
Another woman
reports was out for a run, and hit some poison-oak stems
pretty hard. She’d had mild reactions before, and thought
“It’s just poison-oak!” As a precaution she took a hot shower
right after the run.
She had such
a severe reaction she thought for months she was dying! And,
she was left with chronic fatigue. Five years later she was
still unwell.
She may have
been scratched (see FIRST AID). Use a shower, not a bathtub,
because you want the urushiol to go down the drain, not
spread. Start with cool water at the beginning of your shower;
hot water increases blood flow to your skin, which increases
the rate at which memory cells find the haptene.
BE A SLEUTH
Newlyweds
In 1963 we
got married, and our first apartment cost $25 a month. One of
the things it lacked was screens – they had rusted out.
Jacksonville, Florida, was hot at night, so we left the
windows open and slept under a mosquito bar that we used for
camping. My wife developed a rash on the side of one knee. I’m
lying there one night, and I see the breeze blow the netting
against her leg, and I remembered camping in some ivy. We gave
the netting a bath, and the rash disappeared.
Sometimes you have to be a sleuth to figure it out, but
transmission often works like this – we had crushed some ivy
on the netting, and then forgotten about it.
A Hunting We Will Go
Jack got a leather hunting vest for Christmas; he proudly
hung it in the hall closet, and used it that spring. He used
it next one day in the fall; there was no poison-oak around,
but he got the typical rash anyway!
Leather soaks up urushiol like a sponge. The air in the
closet was dry, ideal storage conditions for the poison - it
lasted six months.
Rosy Cheeks
The doctors were puzzled. The
forces of Japanese occupation had rashes on their right
cheeks; their elbows; and on their buttocks!
Turned out that in their spare
time, the troops were firing captured souvenir rifles and
hanging around Jap bars. The rifle stocks, counter tops and
bar toilet seats were all lacquered with urushiol!
See the
Biochemistry section of this
web site, and the reference in the 12-1-06
Annotated Bibliography for
more information on urushiol. In seventeenth century Japan
demand for urushiol so exceeded supply that the emperor
ordered every farmer to cultivate lacquer trees on a
percentage of his land, and pay his taxes in sap, on pain of
death!
In the early twentieth century
Japanese chemists figured out the chemical structure of
urushiol, which earned them the right to name the mixture.
Urushiol is the word they chose; the word means oil (ol) of
Tsuta urushi, Japanese for the oriental lacquer
tree.
During World War II Japan was
cut off from other sources of lacquer, and they used urushiol
extensively.
Miscellany
Holler on Hollister
Back in the time when it was OK to climb Mount Hollister, a
young man found a banner on a pole wedged between rocks on the
east side of the summit. “Hey,” he yelled to his friend; “I’m
going to be king of the mountain.” He gave a mighty tug on the
pole. To his surprise, the pole popped loose easily. He
tottered backwards – and fell off a cliff.
Poison-oak grew in a lush thicket at the foot of the cliff.
It broke his fall, and he wasn’t seriously hurt!
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