Yesterday, I saved seeds from Habaneros and HBC II's. I didn't wear gloves; my hands are garden tough and may sting a bit, but not painfully so. I washed my hands thoroughly afterwards.
An hour later, I rubbed one of my eyelids, and it instantly started stinging like crazy. I washed my hands again, this time making certain I scrubbed them hard.
An hour later, I scratched next to my eye, and once again, it stung like crazy. I washed my hands a third time, almost rubbing them raw, wondering whether I would ever get rid of the Habanero juice.
I went outside, did some clean-up gardening. Some sweat ran into my eyes, and I was literally blind. I couldn't open my eyes without suffering extreme anguish. I groped my way into the house and rinsed out my eyes. This was getting too weird for words.
Then I remembered a hyperlink about air-drying peppers that Garden5 posted in another thread. The author had said to make sure the drying room was well-ventilated. In a house as tiny as mine, you take whatever room you can get for projects. The peppers are all drying underneath my fluorescent light. Most of them are sharing a heating pad with several cuttings I am trying to grow. I suspect that until those peppers dry out, I will have to be very careful not to touch my eyes.
This may sound crazy, but I am convinced that room is filled with invisible hot-pepper oil. If it's this bad with Habaneros, imagine how it would be with those new super peppers.
Next year, I will sun-dry my peppers, granted that they mature while it's still warm enough outside
