Homes Under The Hammer star Martin Roberts was rushed to hospital this week, after coming into contact with a toxic plant. The 56-year-old took to his Instagram account in the early hours of Wednesday morning to update his followers, and issue a stark warning as he waited to see a doctor. Martin told fans that he had touched a plant called Euphorbia while gardening at home, and had inadvertently rubbed sap into his eyes. In the short video, the former I'm A Celebrity contestant can be seen with streaming, puffy, red eyes, as he says: "This is a really important warning. It's 3.30 in the morning and I am in A&E.
"I was just doing some gardening earlier on, and there's a plant called Euphorbia. You need to look it up on the internet because it's in lots of people's gardens. When you cut it, as I did, it produces a sap, a white sap, and if you get that on your hands, or worse if you get it on your eyes, then it causes some serious issues, and that's exactly where I am right now." He continued: "It will start stinging. It's got worse and worse and worse as the evening's gone on, so I couldn't sleep and now I'm waiting to see a doctor. So listen, look out for this plant, Euphorbia. It doesn’t have flowers, it's green and has yellowy, green leaves that look a bit like flowers."
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Martin later returned to Instagram to update his concerned followers, telling them that he was back from hospital and "on lots of drugs and various eye drops", but that his eyes were still "in a right old state and I feel pretty lousy". According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the milky sap of the Euphornia plant is "highly toxic and an irritant to the skin and eye". It notes that initial symptoms in all cases were a "severe burning sensation with the blurring of vision". Contact with the sap can cause blindness if it is left untreated.