Poison Ivy proliferates with higher CO2 levels

[depakid]

It Eats CO2 for Breakfast


POISON IVY INC. The proliferation of poison ivy has created a business opportunity for Umar Mycka, left, a horticulturist who helps people get rid of it.
----------------

POISON IVY is one of those weeds proliferating like mad as rising levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide heat up the atmosphere. Researchers at Duke University who studied the weed between 1999 and 2004 in a controlled forest area near Chapel Hill, N.C., where high levels of CO2 are pumped into test plots, found that poison ivy not only grew more vigorously, but also produced a more toxic form of urushiol, the resin that causes its rash.

Some people, though, rather than cursing the proliferation of the itchy vine, are mining it as a growth opportunity.

Umar Mycka, a horticulturist with 35 years of experience at the Philadelphia Zoo, has started a business (poisonivyhorticulturalist.com) removing poison ivy for people who don’t want to get near the stuff.

“They come to me like this,” Mr. Mycka said, holding his forearms out, as if covered with the red rash or blisters. “Sometimes their head is out to here,” he added, alluding to the swelling that can occur in acute cases, which may require steroids or even hospitalization. “When it’s that bad, people say, oh, it must have been poison sumac or poison oak,” he said. “It’s not. It’s just that they got it under optimum conditions.”

What are optimum conditions? Picture a meadow or woods on a humid, overcast day, when those resins are pumping through the poison ivy vines, which run along the ground and up the trees. Along comes somebody who has never heard that old saw “leaves of three, let it be,” wearing low shoes or sandals, shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Or maybe someone decides he’s going to clear overgrown brush in the backyard, wearing gloves and a short-sleeved T-shirt.

Robert Shiffrin, a homeowner in Wynnewood, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, recently made that mistake. “I didn’t think to look around,” he said. “I was more interested in the pricker bushes; I wore gloves. But I got this wall-to-wall rash from my wrists to the end of my short sleeve.“

Last week, he followed Mr. Mycka to the edge of his yard, where poison ivy was growing beneath a sassafras tree and up into its limbs. Mr. Shiffrin had such a bad rash, he made the same assumption many others do: “I thought it was poison sumac or poison oak,” he said. “But Umar told me they don’t grow here.”

Poison sumac, Mr. Mycka said, grows in swamps on the East Coast, but there was no bog in Mr. Shiffrin’s yard. Poison oak is actually two species: Western poison oak, which grows on the West Coast, and Eastern poison oak, which frequents sandy habitats like the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, where it grows as a shrub, not a vine. Eastern poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) is far more ubiquitous, flourishing just about everywhere east of the Mississippi River.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/garden/17garden.html
-----------------

I've never had much a reaction to poison oak, but I've hiked friends who've gotten it (literally) all over. Deer love to browse the stuff- and birds have no problem eating the fruit.

http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/vine/toxdiv/all.html

[ingac70]

1. Just reading that made me itch.

It has been 32 years since the one and only time I ever made the mistake of getting into poison ivy. I was 4, and had climbed a tree covered in the stuff, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.

I was totally covered... my mom made me wear socks on my hands to keep me from clawing my skin off. An absolute living hell I shall never forget.

[madokie]

2. I've only had poison ivy on my skin once and that was earlier this year

when we were clearing out a fence line of Ivy and blackberrys and I got some on my arms and before I realized what it was I had it up and down both arms. I can say it sucks no doubt about it. As a kid I could climb a tree that had ivy growing on it and not be bothered and now here at 60 years old I get my first case.

[ingac70]

9. My grandfather...

Went on and on about how poison ivy did not effect him. He claimed this for years, and one day decided to demonstrate that it didn't, rubbing the stuff on himself. He had a right nasty case on his whole upper body from that. LOL. He was so silly.
(R.I.P Pappaw)

[depakid]

10. LOL. Apparently, sensitivity does vary

The Toxicodendrons:
Poison Ivy, Poison Oak and Poison Sumac

When we talk about the reactions to these plants, I must first explain that they are as diverse as the leaflet variations. It is the urushiol (pronounced oo-roo-she-ol) resin, from oleoresin found in the sap, that causes contact dermatitis in humans. Urushiol is found in all parts of the plant but the hairs, wood cells, anthers and pollen.

This is why honey made by bees who feed on poison ivy, isn't poisonous. Even though the urushiols often produce a profound reaction in humans, birds eat the berries and bears, cattle, deer, goats, hogs and horses eat the leaves and stems with no ill effects. It is perplexing to note that rabbits, squirrels and rodents eat the very berries that can so debilitate a human.

It was shown by Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Rook in 1979 that the initial exposure to urushiols does not produce a dermatitis reaction. It takes one or more exposures to develop sensitivity but in six days after any exposure a body can be sensitized.

This means is that there are people like the teacher who used to show (off) for his students how he could stroke and even chew poison ivy leaves. I guess this was a sort of a, "do as I say, not as I do" lesson. He did this for several years until the year he ended up in the hospital.

There is also a record of a lady dying from poison ivy. She was only exposed to the sap every year while washing her husband's hunting clothes. After several years she died due to a severe reaction resulting in a kidney shutdown (Michael Ellis, Jan. 1986). Responses are determined by the amount of urushiol exposure and the sensitivity of the individual.

Dr. William Epstein and Vera Byers developed a human sensitivity test. By putting a small drop of urushiol on the forearm, they found four levels of sensitivity.

10-25% of the people are non-sensitive. 25% are mildly sensitive. 25-30% of the population are moderately sensitive and 10- 20% of the people are severely sensitive. Urushiols are among the world's most potent external toxins. The amount of urushiol it takes to cause a reaction is measured in nanograms (one billionth of a gram).

Most sensitive people react in the 100 nanogram range. Dr. Epstein has estimated that it would take only one ounce of urushiol to cause a rash on everyone on the earth! It's often said that Native Americans were immune to poison ivy but this seems doubtful when you read about all the treatments Indians used for their rashes.

http://ops.tamu.edu/x075bb/caddo/frameidx.html

(one also suspects that native Americans also had sense enough to generally avoid the stuff).

[greenman3610]

3. peeled the skin right off my arms.

seriously, it's like a 3rd degree burn.


remember this when people say, "CO2 is good for plants".
some plants more than others.

[hatrack]

4. And, of course, since poison ivy is one of the favorite foods of deer . . .

Might it follow that more P.I. = more deer = more accidents + more Lyme Disease?

It might!

[XemaSab]

7. On the other hand, when the economy collapses and the grocery stores are empty,

Venison fajitas are going to sound damn tasty. :9

[Howzit]

5. I thought all plants "eat CO2 for breakfast"? N/T

[XemaSab]

6. It's the most important meal of the day!

:D

[hatrack]

8. CO2 - it's got the nutrients plants crave!!!!

It's even got electrolytes and shit!