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Comment by 3001 | Hacker News Reader

Grew up climbing cashew trees and frying cashew nuts, never have I had an allergic reaction. Any literature on this you can point me to?

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I just looked up this Wikipedia page (note: contains slightly disturbing photos of people's skin rashes)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urushiol-induced_contact_derma...

and it notes that

> People vary greatly in their sensitivity to urushiol. In approximately 15% to 30% of people, urushiol does not trigger an immune system response, while at least 25% of people have a very strong immune response resulting in severe symptoms.

I've also heard this about poison ivy. (I assume cashew plants have less of this irritant than poison ivy does.)

Yeah, my mom only has to walk past some poison ivy, within a couple of feet, and she will end up with a bit of a rash.

You can also acclimate yourself to it through progressively increased exposure.

But it also varies a lot among people. My wife has no issues eating/handling mangoes but her twin sister has horrible allergic reactions.

From what I've read, along with anecdotal experience, the opposite seems to be true. Its seems like you need to be exposed to urishiol a few times before you get a reaction to it.

Often subsequent reactions are worse than the initial.

Literally the wiki page for cashews mentions the compounds in the article. Your anecdotal true life experience may be an anomaly

Seems like it might vary just as much as poison ivy exposure, and for the same reason (or nearly so, since the plants may also have other irritating chemicals that aren't the same between species). Some people are totally immune to poison ivy and don't get any reaction from physical contact with it, although not too many.

My comment in this thread might address this.

Like most allergens, people have very different reactions to it and can grow tolerance over time with exposure.

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