Hogweed Warning

I was forwarded this and I want to ask you if its a real concern or not. What do you think?
[Excerpt from a forwarded email message:]
Just a heads up. This sounds like a pretty nasty plant. It been found up north here in Haliburton [Ontario, Canada].
Bottom line is, don't touch it! If you see one, document the location and contact your local weed control agent to spray it.
Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is an invasive noxious weed native to Asia. There was a bit of a media stir in the Toronto area last summer when some of these plants were located in the city, but from what Doug Thain has told me from his time as the Haliburton County weed control officer, they have not been documented this far north...until now. I discovered a giant hogweed growing alongside the Harcourt Park Road earlier this week. Doug went out to confirm the plant and to take some pictures (attached below), and we thought it prudent to share these with everyone in the district so that you will be able to identify it and avoid it if you encounter one while you're in the field. Giant Hogweed is a member of the parsley and carrot family; it grows 5-15 feet high (the one I found was about 7 feet).
The flower head looks like a large cauliflower. It is further distinguished by a stout dark reddish-purple stem and spotted leaf stalks. Stalks and stem produce sturdy pustulate bristles. The stem and stalks are hollow, stems vary 2 to 4 inches in diameter. The compound leaves of giant hogweed may expand to five feet in breadth. Each leaflet is deeply incised. THIS PLANT IS NASTY! Touch one on a sunny day, and you're likely to have a nasty blister, similar to poison ivy. But it is the sap that causes the real damage; The plant exudes a clear watery sap which sensitizes the skin to ultraviolet radiation. This can result in severe burns to the affected areas resulting in severe blistering and painful dermatitis. These blisters can develop into purplish or blackened scars. It does this through chemicals called furanocoumarins, which react with DNA in skin cells, cross linking the strands and making them permanently susceptible to damage by sunlight. Contact with the eyes may cuase blindness. The dried seeds are apparently used in Iranian food, but the rest of the plant is poisonous to ingest.
There are several websites with hogweed information – here are a few links:
https://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/weeds/aqua012.html
https://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssnrw/hogweed.html
https://freespace.virgin.net/shaun.bark/hogweed.htm

Yes, it is true that this plant can cause rashes in sensitive people. Many years ago, before I understood the plant and what it does, I got a rash handling it. And yes it works by sensitizing the skin to UV light. Not everyone is sensitive, just as not everyone is sensitive to poison ivy. There are lots of plants that do the same thing – sensitizing the skin to UV radiation. (In fact, a B.C. company is using this principle to develop anti-cancer drugs using similar compounds that can be activated by shining light on only those tissues and sites where cancer is – sort of a drug-based surgery.)
I think, however, that this article is too alarmist in relation to the risk. Sure you can go blind if you rub it in your eyes and you are sensitive AND you expose your eyes to UV radiation. Poison ivy can do that too – without the UV radiation. Actually, I have never heard of anyone suffering the kind of severe reaction that the article suggests could happen.
But then I am a rare bird in this business – I am a defender of plants, even potentially noxious ones. Even poison ivy has medicinal uses, and there is even a demand for its leaves (in Germany – not that I would want any growing on my property, though!) I am seeing a lot of moves internationallly, nationally, and locally to control plants excessively, far beyond what is rational. This plant, Heracleum, is tame as far as invasives go, and with a little knowledge and respect for what it can do, people won't go washing their hands in its juice and rubbing their eyes and exposing their eyes to UV radiation.