Virginia Teen Suffers Third Degree Burn After Touching Giant Hogweed Plant

A teenager in Virginia is recovering after he suffered second- and third-degree burns to his face and arms when he encountered a hogweed plant at his landscaping job.

Alex Childress, 17, of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, was rushed to the Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center and later taken to the VCU’s burn center on Tuesday after he came into contact with a large hogweed plant while working at his summer landscaping job in Fredericksburg earlier that day, PEOPLE reports.

“I thought I just had sunburn, so I didn’t really pay any attention. Then I got in the shower and I started rubbing my face. I thought it was just a little bit of skin at first, but then big chunks of my face were falling off,” Childress said. “It felt like wind-burn, like my skin was chapped. “[Doctors] had me stand in the shower for an hour and a half, scrubbing my body with soap to bring the PH level down. I had hot water running over open wounds, that was probably the worst part. That or the burn treatment where they scraped off the dead skin.”

The 17-year-old remained in the intensive care unit for two days before being allowed to return home, still suffering from peeling, blistering skin.

“I have to change the bandages every day. It’s painful. Every time I take the bandage off there’s drainage. My arm is bleeding because the skin is trying to heal. It’s more than half my face and from my wrist up to the top of my bicep on my right arm,” he said. “I can’t go out into the sun for anywhere from two to six months. My face could be sensitive to light for a year up to two years.”

Childress encountered the plant, which is classified as a Tier 1 noxious weed under Virginia law, while performing his summer landscaping job. He claimed that at some time in the afternoon he cut down the plant not knowing that it was hogweed and carried it away beneath his right arm. It was not until his mother, a nurse at Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University, showed him an image of hogweed that he realized he had touched a dangerous plant.

Childress has since created a GoFundMe page to help cover medical bills and college tuition given that his scholarship to Virginia Tech’s Army ROTC is now in jeopardy due to possible medical disqualification.

Hogweed, which first appeared in the United States in 1917, can grow to be fifteen feet tall. When mixed with moisture and sunlight, its sap can “cause severe skin and eye irritation, painful blistering, permanent scarring and blindness,” according to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. It is most prevalent in New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region and the Northwest.