Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/21/wall-street-journal-reporter-eats-poison-oak-leaves-to-become-immune-risking-dreaded-itchy-butt.html
…
7 Likes
They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to urushiol powder.
25 Likes
I’ve also known people who were hospitalized with serious reactions to poison ivy and poison oak. Seems better to just learn to identify it and do your best to avoid it.
18 Likes
Right? This is the first plant our children learned to identify (ivy, anyway; we don’t have oak here). Not only identifying the plant, but the habitat makes all the difference. Ivy doesn’t grow in most places, contrary to popular belief. It generally isn’t found in the forest as it is a massive CO2 eater. Instead, it prefers high-CO2 landscapes like human-disturbed soils like ditches and road margins (look for poke and mullein, which also love to break up compacted and disturbed soils). Lawns and parks are generally mowed, so you rarely find more than a tiny sprout there. Instead look for it climbing up trees and in thickets near fences. You can buy all the Tecnu you want, but unless you know you’ve come into contact with it immediately, it’s not super effective.
14 Likes
Is his property completely infested with the plants or something?
Just bite the bullet and remove them all with gardening gloves.
8 Likes
Besides knowing what poison oak looks like, and not touching it?
17 Likes
18 Likes
Weird flex, but okay.
8 Likes
My G-G’mother tried a variant on that folk remedy and ate poison ivy to cure a bad case. She nearly died when the reaction caused her throat to swell. Myself, I’d rather use jewelweed.
7 Likes
I get severe reactions to it, and as good as I am in identifying it, all it takes is a pooch to brush into it inadvertently on a hiking trail and spread the invisible urushiol oil all over your car and house. I’ve had this happen four times, and while I’m miserable for 6-8 weeks with weeping, itching blisters, I also have to deep clean everything from top to bottom to get rid of it.
There was a scientist who created a compound that you could spray and then see the oil, but it never came to market, probably because there wasn’t a large enough market for it.
I don’t know if poison oak/ivy/sumac is an important part of the ecosystem, but if it (along with biting mosquitoes) disappeared tomorrow I’d be very happy.
13 Likes
Apparently the reaction to poison oak, (like many immune/allergic reactions), is acquired - and tends to develop only after multiple above-threshold exposures that occur within some time-window.
I found this out the hard way a couple years ago (after traipsing amongst poison oak laden hillsides for decades). Apparently my lockdown-era trail visits/exposures became frequent enough to trigger a bad case.
So maybe there is a paradoxical logic to training ones system to not freak out - but the chance of it backfiring seems possible as well.
4 Likes
Jewelweed is just the greatest plant! Not only does it break up urushiol and is super convenient to use because it’s so juicy (grab a thick stem, strip the leaves and crush it in your hands; easy!), the water-repellent leaves, slipper-like flowers and bursting seed pods make it a summer-long delight for children. It’s really easy to orient them toward it for those reasons and is often in close proximity to poison ivy because it also likes disturbed ground near ■■■■■ thickets.
Yeah, I’m not so sure I buy the acquired immunity because I’ve known so many people with higher exposure lifestyles developing a sensitivity. I’ve never had a reaction, but I am also super diligent about wearing long sleeves and gauntlet gloves when removing it (we have a dedicated pair in the garage), always rubbing down with jewelweed after and immediately washing with cold water and plenty of soap after. I’m not assuming that this immunity will last, so I’m stretching it as long as possible.
2 Likes
Sounds like a solid approach - from what I gathered - it’s pretty easy to avoid getting dosed if one is conscientious and diligently removing the oils. But they can be active in microgram amounts(!), so it has to be thorough.Real trouble happens when (like in the case @ashe mentions) it winds up getting unwittingly transferred to random articles, esp. in the domestic environment, i.e. backpacks, boots etc.
That would be super handy. (kind of like those Covid transmission demonstrations with the UV reactive powder).
Sounds handy. Didn’t recognize that one, looked it up - apparently it’s native most everywhere … except - alas, not in CA. Now I keep a couple of bottles of this special soap in my away kits, (supposedly it was originally developed to clean off nuclear fallout!). It has a weird smell, didn’t used to like - but now have come to positively associate it with trekking. (funny that)
2 Likes
I remember when Immunoak was sold at stores. Each package contained three tiny vials. You take one mixed with juice, another 24 hours later, and another a week later. Then every month. I could smear it on my arms and was immune temporarily, as long as I took the vials. They removed it from the shelves , probably because someone was ultra-sensitive to poison oak. I sure miss that stuff. Never had itchy butt because of it.
1 Like
I have similar terrible reactions and Tecnu is what I’ve used for the past 30 years. I slather it on if there’s even a chance I’ve been exposed.
I tried Tecnu Extreme about 20 years ago, worse than worthless. I applied it within an hour of getting poison oak on me (was fine, went for an hourlong hike and a sprig of a vine brushed against my elbow) and when I got home a few minutes later the reaction had started. It didn’t reduce the itchiness and its “exfoliating” properties (it was gritty) did nothing but rupture the blisters and cause them to weep immediately. And if course with open blisters I now had to worry about infection, ugh.
It also contains a 3X concentration of grindelia robusta, which even if that even did anything, according to the homeopathic bullshit essentially means it barely contains any grindelia robusta, as a 3X potency is a 1:1000 dilution (1 part original substance to 999 parts diluent). There are other ingredients in there but they didn’t help in any way either.
When I start to notice a rash I wash the affected area with Dawn dishwashing liquid (“Dawn gets grease out of your way!”) and then wash down everything with the dishwashing liquid.
If I get a severe rash I just have to dope up with Benadryl, as my allergist prescribed Prednisone once which didn’t help all that much and I hated the side effects from that more than the poison oak itself.
One of my last outbreaks (about 10 years ago) I found this video and found that it had the most practical advice on dealing with poison oak/ivy/sumac.
9 Likes
Great video. Totally makes sense.
2 Likes
Burt’s makes a soap that has jewelweed extract along with some other useful ingredients. I could never assess its efficacy since I don’t react, but others I know swear by it.
Oh, wow. That’s a blast from the past. At a certain point I was so heavily exposed that I decided to really understand the threats and this video was one of the most helpful. The engine oil trick is super helpful; similar to when Mythbusters used fluorescent dye to show easily how pathogens spread.
This is totally anecdotal, but it does seem that people who are highly susceptible absorb the poison faster through the skin, at which point topical cleansers are essentially moot. A fried who was highly susceptible told me once that they experienced systemic symptoms within 10 mins of contact. It makes sense that someone who readily absorbs through their skin has an incredibly narrow window to remove the oils (eta: but nobody susceptible I’ve known has ever recommended Tecnu).
1 Like
He’s gonna need an ocean
of calamine lotion.
1 Like
So is your claim, nevertheless, as we are not privy to any Tecnu corporate studies/tests, or any double-blind testing results that’s all we have to go on.
The three in my family (poison oak in OR), and two other people (poison ivy in IL and MI) I know had the same, ineffective results. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The OSU Extension Service references it, so that gives it some credence, and if it works for some people, great, but for me, I stand by my “worse than worthless” statement.
According to Tecnu “A good rule of thumb is to wash within 8 hours, but those who are more sensitive may need to remove it sooner.” Without “sooner” defined, that is a pretty broad timeframe, and one is essentially taking a gamble as to whether it’ll work for them or not.
Since I’ve had better luck with Dawn dishwashing liquid in minimizing the rash, and subsequent cleanup of the car and house to eliminate re-exposure, I’ll be sticking with that. If Tecnu works for you, most excellent. 
1 Like
