Once again I would like to remind people to use TECNU! or any solvent that
will remove tar if they find themselves with a rash from poison ivy or they
think they have gotten in it. Poison ivy puts off a sap that is very
similar to road or roofing tar in how it adheres to the skin (or anything
else). As long as you have it on your skin you are going to be reacting to
it so the goal is to remove it. Tecnu is excellent for doing this. I
suspect any solvent that you would use to take off tar would work as well.
What you DON'T want to do is use Tecnu or the solvent as a soap in the
shower or tub. That simply will spread the tar elsewhere. You want to rub
a small amount of the solvent on the area that is irritated for as long as
you can manage THEN take any paper towel or absorbent material that you are
willing to throw away and wipe off the solvent. Don't re-use the used
surface of the rag/towel or again you will just move the tar from one area
to the next.

I am highly allergic to poison ivy and it is only after years of trying
everything that I found this and trust me it works. The only problem with
it is that it tends to make you complacent since poison ivy stops being the
nightmare it once was.

D Kat

"Lyne" wrote in message
...
I have already read the 400+ items in the thread that ran from 1996 to
2001.

Is it possible to have a poison ivy tree? This is not a tree wrapped
in poison ivy - it is a tree with a non-hairy trunk. It has the
light-colored 3-leaves that (at this time) have red stems and the
leaves look just like the vines that I also have. Oh yeah - the
little green berries are there too. It is about 15-20' tall and has a
nice rounded shape.

Also, are baby poison ivy leaves red, shiny, and more pointy than the
adults? I am finding these very lightly scattered in a field near the
building that has most of the vines.

There is alot of talk about cutting off the vine and applying
Brush-Be-Gone to the stump. It seems to me that it would be better to
spray the leaves because the leaves are pipelines to the root system
so the more leaves you have; the more pipelines.

I was very allergic as a child. I take Claritin for airborne
allergies so I wonder if that might inhibit some of my reaction to the
ivy now. I get little quarter-sized patches of little bumps that itch
some but not alot, plus very stray individual bumps. These could be
bug bites but the patches seem more likely to be poison ivy. The main
question here is "can an antihistamine reduce or prevent the
reaction?"

Finally, everybody talks about Roundup and Brush-be-Gone. My
Weed-Be-Gone -says- that it works for poison ivy. Does anyone know
that it does not?

Thanks!


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