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Poison Ivy vs Bed Bugs
Leon Fisk wrote:
You don't spread it around by scratching the sores. But if the chemical irritation is bad enough that you get blisters that fill with liquid, the area is so sensitive that the mere act of scratching and irritating the area spreads the inflammation and makes it worse. It is not the urushiol spreading the poison ivy, it is the scratching and irritation spreading the inflammation. It heals much faster if you don't irritate the area mechanically by scratching. The itching may drive you crazy, but it will heal faster if you don't scratch. Most poison ivy medicines just treat the itching. This in combination with allergy pills and steroids is about the only treatment. In any case, if you don't scratch it and get an infection, it usually starts to clear up in a week. The urushiol is fairly slow acting. When I was in the Forest Service we used a prophylactic gel soap. We covered ourselves from head to toe with this soap before a shift on a forest fire. Then when we got back 13 hours later, we took a shower in a steam and washed the soap off. This prevented us from getting poison ivy everywhere except in our eyes and lungs. We had to wear face masks when we were in areas where poison ivy was burning since the smoke carries the urushiol in the air and it gets in your eyes and lungs. Once the oil is on your skin and/or clothes, you can touch it and spread it around. You can get the oil on your hands when you take your clothes and shoes off and then spread it to tender parts of your body. If you sit on furniture with contaminated clothing, other people who touch it with bare skin can get urushiol on them. If you take a good shower after working in poison ivy with a brush and a strong soap it usually will remove most of the urushiol and any reaction will be rather minimal. Be sure to scrup in tender areas like between your finger and around your wrists. Some people have hours before a visible reaction, others have days. However, once you start seeing the reaction, it is too late to prevent it. However, clothing that has urushiol on it can still spread the reaction. After working in poison ivy, I take off my clothes in front of the washing machine and put them in myself and proceed directly to the shower. My wife is very allergic, so I can't risk letting her touch my contaminated clothes. -- Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA http://home.earthlink.net/~rhodyman |
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