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Show Watch Your Step For Poison Ivy Do you know how to protect against ivy poisoning, a year round hazard most common during summer? Ivy poisoning is a term used to refer to skin irritation resulting re-sulting from contact with any one of more than 60 varieties of plants found in the United States. Most persons are immune to the biggest share of them. But nearly everyone who touches the three more common plants poison ivy, poison oak and poison poi-son sumac is affected to some degree. Such poisonous plants are the bane of outdoor workers. There's even risk for garage mechanics, golfers and dog lovers! In one year more than 2,000 employees of the Connecticut State Highway Dept. contacted contact-ed ivy poisoning, losing from 2 to five days of work. This despite des-pite a program of inoculations, eradication of roadside growths of the plants and years of experience ex-perience in detecting them. There are cases on record of garage mechanics getting the rash from working on an auto that had come in contact with the irritation-producing plants. Golfers, too, have picked jt up when they handled a golf ball that had crushed leaves of one of the three plants. And, of course, there are instances in-stances of dog-lovers coming down with ivy poisoning after petting fido who just frolicked frolick-ed in the stuff. Ivy poisoning is caused four ways, by bodily contact with any part of the plant, exposure to smoke from the burning plant, contact with clothing or other objects that have been exposed to it, and wading or swimming in water containing its oil. |
