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Today my Dad told us about a man he works with whose wife grew these and didn't know they were hot!!
She sliced them up and put them in salads, like they were sweet peppers...without gloves, too. Poor thing spent the next hour or so with her hands soaking in ice water. Can you imagine?? And they grew a lot of them! Fortunately, they gave them to some Mexican friends, who of course, knew what they were. Whew!
I can imagine, all too well. I got into trouble that way slicing up a peck of jalopenos, only it took me a night to recover... from then on, it was gloves for me! And I discovered the hard way that if you're processing a bunch of habs, the capsaicin will eat through a single layer of latex. Now, I double glove or wear those blue "nitrile" gloves. :-)
Ice water helps, but only while your hands are submerged. Solarcaine (the stuff the sell to put on sunburn, a topical numbing agent) worked a little better as I recall.
At our restaurant, I discovered (and later confirmed with some scientific journal) that a bleach solution will "kill" the burn. The acid is neutralized by the base.
Grew some habanero 38 years ago - thought they were dwarf bell peppers. A neighboor's son asked if they were hot. I told him that I didn't know, so he picked a green one and bit off a little - his eyes got as big as saucers as he ran home. When he returned a half hour later, told me he consumed half a loaf of bread and over a quart of milk to finally be able to have some feeling in his mouth. We pickled and gave away gift jars with a mix of green, yellow and orange. Sure were pretty - and plenty HOT.
Bubba, that makes sense! Bleach doesn't always seem to get all of it.. best treatment is prevention, with gloves... but it's good to bleach down your cutting board, etc afterwards!
