Subject: Poison Oak

From: [email-masked] (John Knapp)
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 08:14:19 -0800

Thank you all for the various suggestions.  The 9% vinegar(i.e. 9% acetic
acid) is certainly the most intriguing of the the alternatives suggested.
And shouldn't do much harm to the skin.  Would love to hear of others
experience with it.  And will be trying it, especially on the small shoots
that keep coming up.

I'm sure the major part of the problem I ran into is (1) not being covered
up well enough, especially between the end of my gloves and my shirt
sleeves(I will use gloves with a longer cuff next time) and (2) not being
thorough enough with the clean up when I was done.  I had worked in poison
oak before and not gotten any reaction - probably dumb luck.

Tec Laboratories, which makes Tecnu(mentioned earlier) also makes a product
called Armor.  The idea is to put Armor on hands, face and other exposed
areas before you go diving in to the poison oak.  Supposed to last about 4
hours.

After Fiona's notes about citric acid, I looked back on the Tecnu box and
noted that two of the ingredients are Tricaprylyl Citrate and Monostearyl
Citrate.  They are also ingredients in Armor. These would be the soap
brethren of citric acid - so citric acid may be an approach worth looking
at.  It may be that citrus is able to break down the urushiols.

Citric acid occurs naturally in lemons, oranges, etc., so I would presume
that it is just a matter of extraction and concentrating through
evaporation.   If I remember my chemistry correctly(it was a long time
ago), citric acid is (depending on the concentration)considerably
stronger(more acidic, lower pH) than acetic acid, so be careful in handling
it. On the other hand it isn't as strong as sulfuric or nitric acids.
Regular sucking of lemons does a wonderful job of eating away tooth
enamel(the hardest tissue in the body). Except for Meyer varieties, I think
lemon has the greatest concentration of citric acid and is probably the
source of commercial supplies.

Over the years I've seen other products, soaps and flea repellents, that
were citrus based.  The flea repellents worked well if the number of fleas
was not too overwhelming.  I'm sure I'll be experimenting with both vinegar
and citric acid in some form.

Thanks again for your thoughts and advice.

John