Once the urushiol oil has bonded to your skin, you are pretty much in it for the duration. Products meant to remove urushiol oil before bonding wouldn't do much good at this point. It is imperative though that you clean thoroughly any item which may have come in contact with urushiol oil. Wash your shoes, clean under your fingernails, wash your garden clothes, gloves, and tools. The oil is potent for quite some time on clothes, gloves, tools, shoes, etc. Some estimates are up to a year though I've seen references of 5 years or more.
The dish soap is a good idea for the thorough cleaning to make sure you aren't recontaminating yourself. The baking soda is good at drying out a rash.
As for recurrences well it's more likely that you are recontaminating yourself. Perhaps your garden gloves have urushiol oil on them? How about gardening shoes or tools? Most people break out 8 to 36 hours after contact depending on concentration of urushiol oil and area of contact (how thick the skin is). Clean clean clean - that's the mantra here. Oh and find that suspect in your yard, positively identify it, and then stay clear (or remove it - I've been doing a lot of that lately). |
