Wash the area with Dawn dish detergent. It is the best emulsifier to break-up and wash away oils of any kind. When I first moved to North Carolina (from Wisconsin where it never gets more than a foot tall), I did not realize that poison ivy here grows like a vine---a LONG vine. On a dead tree in my back yard there was a poison ivy that grew to the top of the tree---70 feet up. The diameter at it's base was 8"! I used a machete and then a hand saw to cut a 6" chunk out of the lower stem to make the whole vine die. Every little piece that touched my skin caused a reaction. It was true misery that lasted about two weeks. I ended up throwing away the clothes that I had been wearing after my neighbor said not to wash it with the laundry cause that would contaminate all the rest of the clothes and the washer, too. It is impossible to walk any natural area here without contacting it. It is on every other tree---especially at the edge of the woods where it can get the light it needs to thrive. After learning that it was caused by an oil---the correlation to Dawn was easy to make, and did help to minimize it. After 38 years of living here I have become immune to it (mostly---would not bath in it). The body builds a tolerance with constant exposure. However, that first major outbreak of it was a shock I still clearly remember.
