If You Love Gardening, You May Want to Hear What Doctors Say About Showering Right After

The ladder slips on a puddle of mud and topples down. A sneaky thorn lurking in a dancing rose pierces a finger. The entire collection of hand-forced gardening tools has aggressive tendencies. Pickaxes often smash feet instead of chopping wood, lawn mowers trim human flesh more than trimming the tough grass matting, hedge trimmers try to tame the gardener in place of trees and bushes. Even if a gardener is spared from these antipathic tools, another enemy lurking in the soil is contaminants.

Pesticides aren’t just jet sprays shot upon leaves or petals, drenching them in sheaths of protection. They might protect the plants against pests. But when it comes to the gardener’s sensitive, unprotected skin, they’re toxic. Some of these chemicals, Palm added, can even have adverse effects on eyes or skin; therefore, gardeners should avoid taking a pesticide-infected object inside their home, especially if there are babies or pets. Plus, showering is a must, needless to say.

Plants and flowers secrete oils or milky liquids for a whole lot of reasons, from defending themselves from predatory attacks to communicating danger to fellow plants to attracting their favorite pollinators, per NIH. In case of plants like lavender, these oils are harmless and quite useful. But there are plants, like poison oak and poison ivy, which secrete an oil called Urushiol. Urushiol can trigger painful rashes throughout the flesh, said Palm, and therefore, showering is the way to go.