Man suffers chemical burn that lasted months after squeezing limes | Hacker News Reader

Man suffers chemical burn that lasted months after squeezing limes

arstechnica.com

107 pointslisper68 comments

Fun fact: this is common knowledge in Brazil since the "national drink" is a caipirinha made with fresh lime juice, so if you drink it on the beach, people will explain for you to be very careful -- if you spill a little accidentally on your leg and don't rinse it off and stay in the sun, you'll get a dark spot that will last for months. Happened to me once.

Ever since, I've been baffled as to why this seems like common knowledge there, yet nobody anywhere else seems to have the slightest idea that this is a thing as far as I can tell.

I've always wondered if anybody ever tried it intentionally to "tan". For me it looked just like a big spot that was super tan, significantly darker than actual tanning can get me. It didn't look unhealthy in any way, just darker. I have to assume it has negative effects though...

Yup grew up in Brazil. I have childhood memories of that knowledge being drilled into my head.

Did you drink many caipirinhas as a child?

There's a splash zone ok you don't need contact =]

Hahah true.

US, GA here. My mom was big on tanning and warned of us this (lemons are also bad). I believe she said something about it being used on purpose for tanning, but that you had to be careful or you would badly burn. She probably did that around the late 80s or early 90s.

Another fun fact: that these chemicals, fur[an]ocoumarins, are also potent CYP3A4 inhibitors. As such they interact with about ~50% of medications. The most common ones are bergamottin and 6',7'-dihydroxybergamottin [1, 2] found in grapefruit juice and in the peels of various citrus fruits like limes.

This is why grapefruit juice among other things may cause increased side effects associated with birth control pills.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergamottin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_intera...

Thank you, I was wondering about the chemistry of this.

When they say to avoid grapefruit juice, it's not because of something innocuous like indigestion. But until recently that had been my assumption.

It is always said that grapefruit interacts with medication.

I didn't know about limes but knew about cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum) which contains similar compounds that cause burns when exposed to sun but I just avoid touching the plant and its typically obvious and easy to avoid (unlike poison oak).

I've been exposed to cow parsnip, and it looked bad - big fluid filled blisters on my legs - but it was painless and mostly just an annoyance.

There is an invasive species of the same genus in North America called Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) that is much more potent and dangerous.

Oh, maybe thats the one I thought was cow parsnip. Didn't realize there was a difference.

Well, I would definitely avoid cow parsnip even though Giant Hogweed is supposed to be much worse. The blisters didn't hurt but they left scars after they healed that took a few years to fade. And I heard about a woman who had to be evacuated by helicopter from a hiking trip because she had most of her legs and a lot of her torso exposed. She was also hiking on a glacier so UV exposure was probably pretty high, too.

Fortunately, we only have cow parsnip around here. (So far, the qualifier we always have to use with invasive species.) From what I understand, Giant Hogweed looks very similar, only larger.

I was going to post something about giant hogweed, too. Never felt its wrath, thankfully, but some stories I've read are horrible.

Is this queen annes lace? We had a lot of it amongst hundreds of other plants that were in this garden of a house my parents bought as a kid. There was some mystery plant in there that gave bad burns but we never suspected the queen Anne’s lace and weren’t really enthusiastic about doing the testing necessary to deduce what the problem plant was

No, it looks quite similar but Queen Anne’s lace doesn’t cause burns. It’s kind of tricky to tell the difference.

Dandelion juice is the same I think. Always leaves hard-to-remove stains on your fingers.

Yup, it's usually one of the first few things that a Brazilian will tell an estrangeiro (foreigner) at the beach, right after the suggestions to use sunscreen religiously while out in the sun, doubly so if they're with their mothers.

I had a weirdly shaped tan for one year after being out in the sun 15 mins in Brazil.

why with their mothers?

> I've always wondered if anybody ever tried it intentionally to "tan"

Yes they have, for centuries at least. Quote from the article that you're commenting on:

> Though it's likely not top-of-mind for most cooks, the phenomenon has been noted for centuries. For instance, in ancient Egypt, people who experienced loss of skin pigment (vitiligo) would treat the condition by covering their skin with the juice of false bishop's weed (Ammi majus) and then lying in the sun to darken their skin.

> I've always wondered if anybody ever tried it intentionally to "tan".

I forget where I got it, but as a kid I once had this thing which looked like a glue stick. You could draw on your skin with it and it would make you extra tanned there. I imagine it was this same kind of chemical in the stick.

This also happened to myself and one or two colleagues when I was a barman. We'd start our shift cutting up limes and lemons for cocktails, and we developed weirdly sensitive skin and dermatitis on our wrists and between our fingers. Eventually a nurse I knew identified is as a very mild chemical burn that we were constantly giving ourselves. It still can flare up now, years later, if I cut up lemons or work with anything too acidic with my hands.

Makes me remember the time when I got like 2 kg of hot pepper. I cut it up small barehand (being very careful not to cut myself), and cooked some stew of it.

I gotta say, that was one of the best stews of my life. Also, after most of the burning went away about 8 hours later, it took only 3 extra days till I could use my hands again.

Use oil on your hands before dealing with hot peppers. This is second nature in places that use a lot of spice.

This is the first time I’ve heard of this “one weird trick”, as someone whose culture is known for cooking with lots of spices. Oil has a tendency to soak up capsaicin, and its even harder to wash off the skin than just…not oiling your hands. We just wash our hands after handling chilies. Never had a problem

cough cough

Gloves anyone ?

cough cough extremely weak immune system with multiple allergies anyone

Wouldn't that be reason to use gloves too?

Unless you're allergic to gloves, I guess.

Allergies are the result of an overactive immune system, which does not mean it’s weak. It can be quite the opposite, unless you constantly trigger them obviously.

Soap and warm water works perfectly for getting oil off your hands, no?

That usually leaves a microscopic layer of the oil, enough to cause pain. You want a solvent as well, like D-limonine ("orange" hand cleaners have this).

And with that we are back to limes. I love when we find cyclical comments

You saturate your skin with oil so that it won't suck up the capsaicin into your natural skin oils instead. Then you wash it off more easily.

I am never able to just "wash my hands" after the good peppers without additional precautions like oil or gloves. Jalapenos? Sure washing takes care of it. Habaneros and significantly hotter to the far end like Carolina Reapers? Yea, gonna have to be increasingly careful.

Generally, it's not the hands that are the problem, it's when you touch your eyes...or other body parts that the capsaicin transfers to that makes things unpleasant.

I got habanero peppers over my hands once (was dumb and didn't wear gloves) and the only thing that helped was quickly rinsing with bleach. Problem was solved.

Carolina Reaper here, my hands were burning for 3 days since the capsaicin was absorbed into my skin.

I made the same mistake once. The only thing that helped against this burning sensation was washing my hands with benzine cleaning solvent. I reckon Schnaps would also have helped.

These substances are also used to intentionally make your skin more photosensitive (There are some skin therapies where treatment is applied through UV-light).

Theoretically you can use them to quicken any tanning, but I guess dermatologists are happy that this isn't too widely known.

Before anyone reading this gets the bright idea to retail this as a new & "innovative" beauty product, consider the lawsuit potential from skin damage that will come from using it in an inevitably slapdash manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_uses_of_silver#Colloid...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria

There are entire groups of people that sell colloidal silver as an alternative health remedy even though it turns their skin permanently blue.

Yeah a while back me and a buddy had the bright idea to use fresh markut limes with our beach beers - embarrassing (but hilarious) bright red puffy lips the rest of the weekend, with I assume chemical + sun burn.

I’ll cook with markut in a heartbeat but I’m not messing with the raw juice anymore, that’s for sure.

My guess is that you experienced margarita burn, so not from the lime juice alone but its reaction with UV. As long as you’re not in the sun, probably fine to handle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophotodermatitis

Oh yeah I’m sure that’s the case - I burn real easy even without the lime juice’s help.

This is literally what the article at the top of this thread is about, why are you presenting this information as if it's unrelated? Additionally, OP said it was chemical + sunburn, not lime juice alone.

I picked papaya / pawpaw for a year, and the tree sap burns you for months, you bleed in your sleep when you sweat, you lose your body hair where it burned and it never regrows.

Nature doesn't mess about.

Mango sap is also super caustic.

Interesting. I remember it being itchy, but I always assumed it was an allergy.

Surprise no one's figured out a way to package this for permanent hair removal purposes.

That's because the profuse nightly bleeding didn't test well with ages 0-120.

Fig sap, it's like glue, I burned my lips and tongue as an avid fig forager, the trick is to wait at least a day when you pick a fig not totally ripe, so it burns less

Where was this? It's the first time I've heard papaya and pawpaw used interchangeably outside of Guyana.

North queensland, Australia.

I had unpleasant experience with some consumer chemicals. Removing paint from the balcony barriers, I didn't bother to cover my feet. When a small piece of paint with acid in it landed on my bare foot top, I thought that was nothing special, but it started to feel burning more and more, so I had to go wash it off in the bathtub. After this happened the third time, I finally decided to tie cardboard pieces to my legs and feet. No scars were left, probably thanks to the immediate burning feel.

Another time, I used so-called anti-grease cleaner, which is an alkali just stronger than common soap. Usually it comes as dense liquid like "Fairy", but that one was spray. I wondered why, and I saw it work better than the previous ones, but failed to add 2 + 2. The % of the alkali was higher, it was a lot more aggressive, that's why it was enough in smaller quantities.

Washing a pan inside with a brush (I did put on protective glasses), I felt it stick to my finger, but bother washing it off. When I did, I was already feeling the skin and the flesh underneath burn, and they shrank noteably, exactly like after you touch hot stove inside surfaces, or hot gas oven grill. I feared I'd have to treat it for couple of weeks, but magically that evening the finger came to normality, and no scars were left. Whew!..

An even worse one isvhosuehold rust / lime stain remover; some of it contains hydrofluoric acid which can penetrate some types of gloves, go through your skin, and damage your bones. And you won't feel anything for a few hours. It's unbelievable to me that such a solution can be sold as a household chemical when there are far safer alternatives.

correction: did not bother washing it off

> Of course, now that he knows, if he gets a lime burn again, there's no one else to blame—it's his own fault.

What a weird last line; they could have just left that out.

It's a bit of a clumsy rewording, but it pairs with the opening line that mentions Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville". In the song, the narrator eventually laments that "some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault".

Gosh I know we have “do not track” as an option in browsers but I wish we also had a standardised setting for “do not ever show images of skin conditions”. Poor chap, no pun intended.

I’d actually find it quite helpful — as an adult! — to have local content filtering for just this reason. It might be a good argument against the age-verification lunatics. With local content filtering I’d be able to opt out of gore. With AV, I’d be in the weird position of having to pose as a child, online, to get the filtering I need.

Get lime juice on your fingers (or maybe the peel oil). Then touch a disposable transparent plastic cup. You will leave fingerprints, dissolved into the plastic.

Also I think googone is made of orange peel oil.

I got a "cold virus defense" once that was basically an orange oil gel you rubbed on the inside of your nose. I can't say it burned me and it did smell good but I couldn't tell you if it worked or not.

Lime juice is crazy acidic. I was making Vietnamese Shaking Beef in a wok about a year ago, and it's finished with a sauce made of sugar, fish sauce, and reduced lime juice. My wok was well seasoned at the time, and I'd quick simmered wine and lemon juice in it before without damaging the patina. But just 2-3 minutes of that lime juice boiling in there took it all the way back to bare metal. It looked like I had put barkeeper's friend in there!

This happened to me in Bali a few months ago, I ordered a plate of tacos, they came with a side of lime. When I squirted the lime some of it shot out the side and got me right in the forehead. I didn’t think anything of it until it became inflamed and later blistered. I still have a dark patch resembling a drip on my forehead.

if you want a host of weird and horrible diseases, read through beth moles article history.

so can I eat carrots or not?

not exhaustive, but this paper (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8070520/) shows very low levels of a few of these compounds in carrots compared to other edibles (ex. grapefruits).

The pictures of “margarita burn" / "lime disease" / "phytophotodermatitis" are horrific for what you'd expect. The photos in this article are quite tame

https://www.google.com.br/search?q=phytophotodermatitis&udm=...

  Jewels, 12, and Jazmyn, 9, wound up spending several days in an intensive care unit, hooked up to morphine to manage the pain...

  A neighbor had a large lime tree that grew over the fence into the backyard where the girls went swimming. They had picked some of the fruits and squeezed them out into imaginary tea cups in their play lemonade stand

Low level NSFL - https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2013/09/phytophotodermatitis....

The medical term: Phytophotodermatitis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophotodermatitis)

You can get it from the carrot family, citrus, mulberry, and legume. Most people only know about the citrus.

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