A New York City woman is warning others after what seemed like an ordinary afternoon of making margaritas left her hands covered in painful second-degree burns.
Haley Peacock, a designer based in Brooklyn, went viral on TikTok after sharing her experience with “margarita burn” — a skin reaction that can happen when citrus juice is left on the skin and then exposed to sunlight.
In a follow-up video, Peacock urged viewers to take the risk seriously, saying, “please, please, please, do not squeeze citrus and then go lay in the sun.”
“And if you do, please wash your hands with soap like 17 times,” she added, stressing that a casual rinse is not enough after handling limes or other citrus.
The injury happened while Peacock was hosting a birthday gathering for her boyfriend upstate. As part of the celebration, she hand-squeezed about 30 limes to make a large batch of cocktails for 25 guests.
Afterward, she believed running her hands under water had removed the juice. She then spent the rest of the day by the pool, not realizing a reaction was already developing on her skin. At first, nothing appeared to be wrong.
By the next day, however, the damage was impossible to ignore: her hands were bright red, swollen and intensely painful.
“After I was finished with squeezing all of the limes, I ran my hands under the sink,” Peacock said in the video as she described how the burns unfolded.
“I didn’t think much of it — my hands didn’t feel sticky or anything, and I knew we were just going to be by the pool and in the pool all day, so I just really didn’t think — I don’t know. It didn’t really cross my mind,” she added.
The day after she got back to Brooklyn, fluid-filled blisters — some reaching the “size of golf balls” — engulfed her hands, requiring medical treatment and heavy bandaging.
“My whole hand is discolored,” she said, after receiving treatment for the second-degree burns at urgent care.
“There are blisters the size of golf balls — one on my thumb and one by my ring finger.”
Margarita burn, or “phytophotodermatitis,” is a severe inflammatory skin reaction that occurs when photosensitizing chemical compounds in plant juices — such as limes — interact with UV light from the sun, causing tissue damage and blistering akin to chemical burns.
“I commonly see phytophotodermatitis when somebody has been barbecuing on a sunny afternoon and having drinks with limes in them, like margaritas or beers with a lime squeezed in,” Dermatologist Melissa Piliang told the Cleveland Clinic.
While lime juice is the most frequent culprit, dermatologists note that celery, figs, fennel, carrots, and parsley can also trigger the condition when exposed to sunlight.
