By GLENN GARNETT
When it comes to silent dangers in the woods, you can pick your poison - poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac.
It was Captain John Smith who first coined the phrase “poison ivy” when he arrived in Virginia in the seventeenth century. Since then it’s been discovered across the continent and in every province save Newfoundland. In Canada, it’s most prevalent in southern Ontario and Quebec’s cottage country. You’ll find it near lakes, rivers and streams, on the edge of forests and in forest clearings. The glossy perennial is a trailing vine and can grow up to 120 cm high , entwining on tree trunks, climbing up fence posts or just hangin’ around the ground waiting for you. Poison oak and sumac, on the other hand, are shrubs.
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“Leaves of three, let them be” is a handy phrase to remember in identifying hazardous plants in the bush (although poison sumac has 7 to 13 leaves on a branch). Poison ivy plants consist of three pointed leaflets per cluster, the middle one with a much longer stalk, with the edges smooth or jagged. The leaves vary greatly in size, from 8 to 55 mm in length. They are reddish when they pop up in the spring, turn green during the summer, and become various shades of yellow, orange or red in the autumn.
What poison ivy has in common with its relatives, poison oak and sumac, is an oil inside called urushiol, a very potent chemical. Only 1 nanogram (that’s a billionth of a gram) is needed to cause a rash. To put that into perspective, you’d just need ¼ ounce of the stuff to get the entire world itchy!
Urushiol is a stubborn foe. It will stick to just about anything and even after it dries remains potent for up to five years. So it can lurk unnoticed on clothing, gardening tools, even your dog until your hapless contact later on.
Touch it and you can get an allergic contact dermatitis. Your body sounds the alarm and your immune system goes on the attack with skin proteins. But it’s much ado about nothing - without your body’s response, the oil would be completely harmless. And that’s the rub…if you’ll pardon the pun.
These plants only release urushiol if they’ve been damaged which, unfortunately, is very easy to do - it’s the rare plant that hasn’t been compromised by insects, the wind or contact with animals. What happens after a person accidentally brushes by one of these damaged plants, or foolishly plucks a leaf from one to admire it (hey, it happens), will vary from person to person.
Doctors say your first contact with poison ivy will likely not result in any rashes - in fact, it’s estimated that between 15-30% of us never develop a sensitivity. Young kids also catch a break here - few under the age of seven are sensitive to the effects of urushiol.
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But even the first time around a breakout can occur, up to a week to ten days later. After that, if you’re sensitive at all, that tell-tale itchy, red rash will strike with a vengeance between eight hours to three days after you’ve blundered into that !@$$!@# poison ivy patch again. About 15% of us are highly sensitive to contact and can break out in a rash within four hours of contact.
The first symptom is severe itching which is followed by a red inflammation and skin blistering. You may get oozing sores but it’s important to note that the rash spreads from contact with the plants, not from contamination from sores. Although you become very unpleasant to be around, most cases clear up within ten days. Afterwards the healed areas can remain hypersensitive to further contact - but that’s not going to happen again, right?
Before you start spraying gasoline and strike a match on that ivy patch, the best medicine for treating the reaction is with a corticosteroid which calls off the immune system attack and reduces the inflammation. Zanfel is getting rave reviews on most of the poison ivy sites we’ve checked out. For milder cases, a manganese sulfate solution can reduce the itching.
If you believe you’ve made accidental contact, doctors say to wash your infected skin immediately with cold water - H2O inactivates urushiol. This will limit the severity of the breakout and prevent its spread elsewhere on your body. Unfortunately your skin absorbs the active agents in urushiol within three minutes of contact, so fast action is a must if you’ve got an inkling of exposure.
Like everything else, there are several myths and old wive’s tales surrounding poison ivy and treatment for contact. For starters, it isn’t true that you can tell you’re infected by placing a dime under your tongue (apparently the coin turns green if you are). Contracting it once does not mean it will recur over the next seven consecutive summers. Affixing a slice of onion on the infected area will not draw out the poison (but it may make you cry). And for pete’s sake, do not eat a poison ivy leaf as a means of treatment or chew leaves to build up immunity - that’s an old brother’s tale, actually.
For more information on Mother Nature’s chemical warfare, there are a number of interesting websites out there which will also help you identify these hazardous plants. Check out the Poison Ivy, Oak and Sumac Information Centre (http://poisonivy.aesir.com), the Poison Ivy Site (www.poison-ivy.org) and Agriculture Canada’s site at http://res2.agr.ca/ecorc/poisivy/title.html
