Irritant Contact Dermatitis: House and Garden Plants

Abstract Potential irritants lurk everywhere. Even attempts to beautify our surroundings with plants, shrubs, flowers, and trees can be a dangerous experience. And those who attempt to get away from it all by consorting in their unique way with nature may meet a similar fate. Most physicians are trained to think of plant dermatitis in terms of allergy, because these reactions tend to be more dramatic and require dermatological care; but for frequency of encounters and niggling annoyance, the irritant plants surely take the prize. Fortunately, most of these cutaneous transgressions lead to limited disability that can be treated conservatively without medical intervention. This paper deals with irritant plant dermatitis as seen after casual exposure and not with the problem of plant product eruptions nor, with a few exceptions, with the rashes encountered in the workplace. For a general background into plant dermatitis, readers are referred to an eminently readable, if not totally comprehensive, book,1 and specific sources will be cited where useful.