Poison Ivy Removal Service is Itching to Help

Poison Ivy Removal is a certified specialist dedicated to eradicating poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. 

The company offers services across various states, including New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. They also use organic methods for eradication, ensuring a safe and effective removal process. 

We spoke to the founder, Steve Greenberg, who suffered from severe poison ivy allergies as a child, about his passion for identifying and removing these plants. 

How did you get started in this line of work?
I had a near-death experience with poison ivy when I was 16 years old. I was working as a day camp counselor at West Hills Day camp in Huntington, and everywhere I went barefoot, so I had no idea at the time that I was traipsing through poison ivy endlessly for days. And then I started to develop some kind of weird itching rash between my toes. A few more days go by and all of a sudden this rash between my toes is now starting to consume my body and the rash is rapidly spreading up my legs, my calves behind my knees, my torso. Eventually I have it in my ears. I have it in my eyes. My eyes are welded shut and the itching is insane. 

So I think it was at the end of the week, day six or something like that, my mom came in to wake me up and I said, I’m having trouble breathing. So they rushed me to the hospital ER, where upon the doctor took a look at me and goes, “Oh boy, you have one bad case of poison ivy.” I had the rash in my lungs.  The blisters were rupturing, and I was slowly drowning in my own fluids, which was explaining why I was having trouble breathing. So for the sake of God and drugs and steroids, I lived to tell about it. 

While I was recuperating that summer, I did some research to find out more about what happened to me because I mean, I was debilitated. I looked like a fire burn victim. My face was disfigured, my body was scarred over. I was really a mess. And I learned that 85% of the population was allergic to poison in my view. It wasn’t just me. That’s when the light bulb went on. I go, wow, Eureka, what a business opportunity. But I did the calculations and I said, wow, 85%, all those people just would give me 10 cents, 50 cents or a dollar. I’d be making three to $12 million a year just dealing with poison ivy on some level. And that’s how I aim to create poisonivyremoval.com. 

What sets your company apart from the competition?
We do it organically. Unlike most of the competitors out there who are very quick to spray, most people don’t want to touch poison for obvious reasons. So they quickly go in and spray with toxic herbicides, which I don’t approve of. In fact, we’re not even, we don’t spray or the performance model is based upon selective manual removal. And what we do is my crews are trained to go in and physically search out the vine and dig out the vine with the root. So this minimum disruption to the landscape, there’s no collateral damage as a result of any toxic herbicides killing desirable vegetation. And our results are immediate, unlike spraying, which takes sometimes two weeks for the chemical to work if it works. And then someone still has to come back at that point and do the physical removal, which we’ve done immediately there, digging it out right on the spot. So our method is entirely, is a hundred percent immediate safe kid and pet friendly, and it’s guaranteed against results, guaranteed against regrowth. 

Can you elaborate on some of the services you provide?
Well, we specialize in vegetation and removal. So we take on really the more difficult stuff that most homeowners and landscapers alike don’t have the patience, the time or the understanding of how to deal with the plants. So for example, not only do we deal with poison ivy, poison oak and sumac, but we deal with bamboo removal, Japanese knotweed removal, invasive vines like wisteria, English ivy, mild minute lead, things like that. And those particular plans are very ubiquitous in the environment and extremely difficult to eradicate, which is why we choose to take them on because most people don’t have the wherewithal to do it. We do. 

What new trends are you seeing in the industry?
The only trend that I’m seeing at this point is as a result of climate change and climate warming, poison ivy has become, its range of growth, has expanded northward into latitudes. Before it would never grow because it was too cold. I’ve also found that the active ingredient, held responsible for causing the rash, has now become stronger, more concentrated in the plants. So as you get a rash faster with lesser amounts of irritant, and then the plants themselves are growing much larger and faster as a result. 

What unique issues do you face operating on the East End?
It’s bad enough to have to deal with the grueling heat when you get your poison ivy, but the tick population has skyrocketed, and that’s become a real preeminent concern for the safety of not only myself when I’m out in the field estimating, but my working crews as well, because they’re crawling around daily on their hands and knees, going through all this overgrowth, vegetation to remove whatever it is. So they’ve got to be really vigilant on a lookout for a tick presence on their bodies. 

Do you have any sayings in your line of work?
Leaves of three, let it be. It’s the old adage that’s been around for a lifetime. And the old song by The Coasters said it best, “you’re going to need an ocean of calamine lotion the minute you mess around with poison ivy.” No truer words could be spoken to this day, and it never goes out of style. 

Is there anything else you want to add?
We’re also in the process of franchising our business model because the amount of poison ivy that grows is not just local to Long Island. It’s in pretty much 47 or 48 of all the 50 states. It’s some level, and we get phone calls on a daily, weekly recurring basis from people out of our geographic area looking for poison ivy removal. And of course, we’re not there, which is why we’re not franchising. 

For more information visit poisonivyremoval.com or bambooremoval.com or call 1-888 P.I.RELIEF

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