A study of the effects of reactive ion etching on molecular beam epitaxy grown (CdxZn1-xSe/ZnSe) strained quantum well (QW) samples using low temperature photoluminescence reveals a blue shift in the characteristic peak position of the 8 nm QW when exposed to plasmas of H-2, D-2, or He. Based on experimental results we suggest that this blue shift is a result of ion induced damage interacting with strain present in the as-grown QW. The QW is compressively strained at the interface with additional local strains in the QW lattice due to its random ternary alloy composition. The shallowest QW samples exhibit a peak in the blue shift as a function of bias voltage, with a reduced blue shift seen at high voltages.