Poison ivy remedy

[purplehaze]

maybe you and your boyfriend should stay out of the weeds.

Any of you guys that get poison ivy use banana peels to dry it out

 

[DanB]

Mineral Spirits. I got some poison ivy after falling from a tree a couple weeks ago. couple of days after the rash came around I did some searching. Found Minderal Spirits as a killer of the oils that cause the rash.

couple of rub downs in the garage later I'm good to go. Now anytime I come in contact with the ivy I'l soak a papertowel or rag and rub down. does the job.

 

[iriediver]

Calamine, preparation h and hydrocortisone, equal parts mix. Used it on all my guys and they liked it. Ounce of prevention works best though.

 

[Danny]

Ban roll-on deodorant. Smothers it.

 

[Buzzdraw]

I've become pretty allergic to PI.

If you know that you've gotten into the stuff and can immediately wash it off with lots of soap & water, then that may do.

zanfel

Zanfel works great for when the "oil of nastiness" has been on long enough to start the blisters. Not cheap, but a tube is good for about 10 applications. Normally just one application is enough to stop a blister-fest.

I may have to try the boiled polk root trick sometime. Polk is pretty easy to find.

 

[Shadowrider]

Another 'lil tidbit is the resin is still present even in a dead plant. And it can still get you for several years! We had a field of the stuff at one of my prior jobs. They were going to build on that lot and have our maintenance do the fence clearing and mowing with a brush hog. Our maintenance supervisor told me he was going to use roundup brush killer on it first. So I did some googling and let him know that if he let it lay for about 7 years he'd be alright. It was on the south side of the building and since the wind always seems to blow from the south it would blow right smack into my department. I told them to let me know when because I would be sick that day.

 

[bettingpython]

Geez guys, y'all are worse than a bunch of basic trainees.

Smoke the banana peels, it'll have about the same effectiveness...
Don't use bleach, solvents, urine or excrement to "Treat" the resultant rash. Don't eat leaves to develop an immunity or you'll be scootin' like a dog with worms. There's no urushiol inside the blisters, so there's no value to opening or otherwise abrading the area, other than because it feels good to scratch the hell out of it and seed your fingernail bacteria into the open skin.

The urushiol is a chemical toxin that does it's damage pretty quickly. Even 15 min. of contact is more than enough to get it started, of course you won't see the effects for 1 or more days. To add, it's a toxin with allergenic properties, which is why some are more susceptible than others. All humans are susceptible to some extent or another. Think you're immune? Rub a handful of leaves on your junk or stand downwind of a burning pile of poison ivy plants and breathe deeply (Don't really do the last one, you can end up in an ICU).

Do- Learn what poison ivy, oak and sumac look like (Ivy being the main threat in OK) and stay out of it. If you come into contact, wash it off with soap and water ASAP. Use 1% Hydrocortisone cream for mild dermatitis, see your Doc for more severe symptoms. Oral Corticosteroids are the mainstay of treatment although many Primary Care Physicians prefer to give a billable injection of steroid that lasts about 2 days, then chase it with the oral version. However treated- Topical, oral or injected, it's important to treat for roughly 10 days. If you don't treat long enough, you'll notice a "flare" of the rash- still from the same contact, just didn't suppress the reaction long enough.

Remember to keep your head out of your 4th point of contact...

Short of deliberately rubbing it on my junk or fueling a fire with it and inhaling the smoke, both of which I haven't tried I have never had a reaction to urushiol from plants, neither has my wife.

Unfortunately my son does react to it, I forgot I had been walking through it when I was done muzzle loading came home and my son gave me a hug he rashed up on both arms.

 

[UnSafe]

To add to the above post describing the lifespan of the urushiol, pretty common for young Army Physicians to misdiagnose wintertime poison oak/ ivy dermatitis on mechanic's faces or arms after they've been servicing the underside of vehicles that have run across acres of the stuff all summer. The tops and sides of vehicles get washed with brush and hose, rained on, etc.. but the bottoms only get a hose job. Deer hunters that drag deer to the truck get it as well when wrestling the carcass up.

Fun stuff!

 

[-Pjackso]

I use the mechanic's hand soap called "Goop".
Lather it on thick, let the soap sit to lift the oil (15 min for me), then wash off.
Repeat.

 

[pistolpete95]

I use some stuff called Tecnu after I even think I was exposed. It has prevented a lot of misery.