Lab Best Practice

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

aga

Well-known member
Supporting Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2016
Messages
258
Location
Spain
Rubber or nitrile gloves are certainly a good idea when handling chemicals.
Basically we did not evolve to deal with concentrated chemicals.

Wearing gloves does NOT make your hands into a tool that contacts chemicals.

Use tweezers or a glass rod or something to transfer filter papers etc.

After all procedures, your gloves should be as clean as when you put them on.

Gloves are a Backup safety device - they are not an invincible shield.

Some chemicals are of no concern at all, but heavy metal salts will certainly cause damage, and those salts are what refiners deal with.

Developing a good set of safe lab habits certainly pays dividends in the long run.
 
Whilst your advice is good in a tiny scale environment, in a practical environment dealing with more than a tiny amount of material and liquids tweezers are neither practical nor productive. A glove is never going to be as clean as when you start a procedure especially when dealing with decent quantities of material and chemicals. For example picking up a 2 litre beaker that's been hot and dissolving metals- there are residues all over the lip and the watchglass that you should have over it. Even touching that watchglass deposits things onto your glove.

Washing down a glove immediately is not an issue, or even changing a glove regularly. They are cheap and disposable. Don't expect one glove to last all day it really doesn't work. I probably go through 20 pairs per day but given the cost it's a no brainer.
 
I find it's easier to just do my refining naked, then shower afterward.

There are times that you will have to handle liquids, or solids, with a gloved hand...what is important is that the glove is rated for the chemicals you are using, and the thick enough to withstand the abrasion, whilst thin enough to maintain dexterity.

I buy high quality nitrile gloves for most of what I do with chemicals. If it's just handling dirty junk, inside, I prefer latex examination gloves. If it's for handling dirty junk, outside, it's leather gloves....but as Jon said, once you move past processing a microchip or something tiny, you aren't using microtools, you are rinsing your glove, or saving it in a separate pile to incinerate and process later.
 
snoman701 said:
I find it's easier to just do my refining naked, then shower afterward.

I assume that this was an attempt at humor. However, not everyone who comes to the forum speaks English
and off hand comments like this one have the possibility to be taken literally. Is this nit-picking? Perhaps but
safety is not something to be trifled with in my humble opinion.
 
The post was really about good Lab Practice/Hygiene and developing useful habits around chemicals.

Whether you're dealing with small quantities or large, benign or super-toxic chemicals, you should use "Best Practice" which is more about health than cleanliness.

There is no other way to ensure that small quantities are not entering your body each time you perform a process.

Small quantities absorbed every time (especially heavy metals) can accumulate enough to cause harm = disease, or even death.

Developing good lab hygiene habits pays dividends when moving from Gold to Platinum, as Pt salts are a lot more toxic - if the habit of preventing anything getting into your body is already in place, it would be a lot safer.

I think it was Nickvc who told me that Pt refiners tend to die younger than Au refiners.

If you're getting yourselves covered in chemicals all the time, i'd suggest that the processing system/machinery is inadequate for the scale of the job. On a large scale, there should be enough $ to get a 'plant' designed & built to handle the large volumes more safely.

For example, you will not see anyone working in a factory that daily produces tons of paracetemol covered head-to-toe with white dust.

The point is that gloves are not a magic force-shield that makes normal hands into great stirrers that can be shoved into any chemical mix safely.
 
snoman701 said:
I find it's easier to just do my refining naked, then shower afterward....
You'll not wash out the heavy metals ions that already passed through your skin, and are now making their way to your lungs, liver, kidneys and central nervous system.

It is no joke, at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
 
anachronism said:
Whilst your advice is good in a tiny scale environment, in a practical environment dealing with more than a tiny amount of material and liquids tweezers are neither practical nor productive. ...
Use pliers, tongs, a hydraulic lift if necessary. Not Hands.

anachronism said:
... a 2 litre beaker that's been hot and dissolving metals- there are residues all over the lip and the watchglass that you should have over it. Even touching that watchglass deposits things onto your glove. ..
Exactly why you should not touch it - use a tool of any type.
Alternatively, use a set of glassware that will not crust up with stuff.

Sticking a saucer on a beaker is hardly an advance in technology - you could try sticking an inverted bowl over it to prevent the spatter reaching the Top of the bit you need to touch.

If it needs modifying to allow the gasses to escape, use the oxy torch and modify the bowl, or the beaker.
It isn't like refiners don't have the balls or equipment required to mess with glass.

anachronism said:
... given the cost it's a no brainer.
When the cost is your Health, or even your Life, i have to agree.

Gloves are cheap, but You are worth much more.

No amount of money is worth getting sick or even dying for.
 
Your post is in good intent, but impractical.

Even the tablet deduster machine at the paracetemol factory has to be cleaned, and they aren't using robots to do it. They are using people with situational appropriate PPE in place.
 
Industrially, where a human simply HAS to come into contact with stuff, adequate PPE is used or the company gets sued. That's a good safety incentive.

Private refiners don't have that incentive.

Step back for a second and look at how you process stuff, step by step, and see if you can think of a safety improvement for each step. This will be different for every refiner.

The actual chemicals and when/how they get mixed will be exactly the same as now, because that Works, just there will be simple ways to reduce risk in some way or another.

E.g. if you always get stuff on your cover plates, try using tall-form beakers. The cover plate will be further away from the boiling liquid, so less spatter will reach that high. Maybe just use a much larger beaker than normal, for the same reason.

Safety improvements usually come down to a bit of common sense, tend not to be difficult/expensive to do, and always seem obvious after someone says it.

Bottom line is that Safer refining = More refining with less impact on health.
 
An idea - why not attach a glass rod bent into a handle to the top of the cover plate ?

That way you'd not have to touch the clag on the other side, improving safety by allowing you to remove the plate without getting any chemicals on your hands, also reducing the need to refine rubber gloves.

Here's a mock-up with a saucer and plasticine:

handle.jpg
Unfortunately we have no round saucers in the house :shock:

A glass stir rod + heat and probably a bit of practice should work for this.
 
I have been known to take pot lids made from glass and remove the handle, (usually the ones with a knob style handle and attached with a single screw). Then I re-attache them on the inside. Effective handle on a make shift watch glass. Coat the screw head with an effective sealant and don't over tighten the screw.
 
In the aga vs anachronism thing, I'm 150% with anachronism. If I worked like aga, I would worry myself sick, only get half as much gold out, and would go insane. Too paranoid for me plus, in the long run, it's probably more dangerous. It's been proven to me many times that, the more unnecessary safety equipment one wears or uses, the greater the possibility of an accident. The correct amount is the bare safe minimum. The purpose of gloves is to get chemicals on them that, if you weren't wearing gloves, would be on your hands. I rarely use anything but gloved hands or ungloved hands to pick up any container, hot or not, up to the size of a full bucket. Sometimes, believe it or not, it would safer to not wear gloves, like when they're wet and slick. Never pick up a straight-side, heavy-duty 4 liter beaker with wet gloves. Don't ask how I know that. The only tool I can think of that I use to pick up anything is a strip cut from a cardboard box, about 1" wide x 6-8" long. I wrap it around the neck of a superhot 250ml erlenmeyer flask and pinch it tight, in order to pick it up and swirl it, when I'm wet ashing and the solution is literally about 400F, maybe more. They make special tongs for that, but the cardboard works just as well if you keep the hot sulfuric off of it, which is easy to do.

Gloves are tools. Their main usage is to act as a barrier between your skin and chemicals. For most solutions, except concentrated nitric or sulfuric, I always kept a pair of shoulder length black butyl gloves, just in case I had to retrieve something from the bottom of a full bucket or a tank that wasn't over about 15" deep. I do wash gloves off when I get strong chemicals on them, especially nitric, sulfuric, or lye. Strong sulfuric will quickly eat about any rubber gloves except $60 teflon ones.

About the only thing I'm really careful about, when it comes to gloves, is to never handle anything that will puncture them, like ICs or DIPs, with sharp legs. The reason is obvious. I use leather work gloves for them.

Invariably, chemicals will get inside the gloves. When that happens, I rinse them out and then stick them on the top of broom handles and let them dry. I hate thin latex or nitrile gloves and have only worn them a few times when nothing else was available. Actually, nitrile is not that great for the chemicals we use - look it up. I like the cloth lined, two-tone green (usually) rubber ones, like the ones sold in farm stores for handling anhydrous ammonia. To take them off or put them on, you don't even have to touch the outside. You just shake them off onto the edge of a bucket or drum. They'll stand up by themselves, so, to put them back on, you just stick your hands into them. That works best after you've worn them a few times and they're limbered up a bit. I always roll up about a 1" cuff on these. That way, if you get any acids on the gloves and you hold your hands up, the cuff will catch the acid and prevent it from rolling down your forearm.
 
Disappointed that you see it that way goldsilverpro - there is no battle, just a discussion.

If i didn't think about it at all and just threw chemicals around, i'd not even be thinking of the risks, much like any noob to refining or chemistry in general.

Taking a small amount of time to look at what is happening, what could happen, then thinking of ways to improve, well, that makes me feel safer, and worry Less, not More.

The simple idea is to see if there is any way to improve Safety in the process of refining.

An experienced refiner like you knows what works, not only in how chemicals are used, and in what strength/quantity, but in when to add them, and what to do if it does not look 'right'.

That knowledge you already have, plus loads of experience doing it.

Surely there is at least 1 small thing you could suggest to make refining safer.

Clearly this would be a question for each refiner, as everyone has their own set-up/method.
 
Forget the first sentence and read it again. Two of us (amongst others) have disagreed with what you said. That's not disappointing that's experienced positions.

It's not a battle for me but when you refuse to see experienced logic I do begin to question your theories.
 
Well, faced with two people with years of successful refining experience between them,
i'll have to accept that i'm wrong.

So, wearing appropriate gloves and jamming your hands into strong acid full of heavy metal ions is the best and safest way possible.

Thanks for putting me straight.
 
aga said:
So, wearing appropriate gloves and jamming your hands into strong acid full of heavy metal ions is the best and safest way possible.

Thanks for putting me straight.

I made my first reply to you in the hope of a decent discussion, not to pick a fight. We all hear things we don't want to hear or opinions we don't agree with. That's a part of life and being a grownup means we should be able to handle that in a mature way without responding like a spoiled child.

You think what you want to think. I honestly don't have any more time to waste on playground behaviour.
 
anachronism said:
... I made my first reply to you in the hope of a decent discussion ...
That would be the most useful thing - a discussion.

When faced with "what i do is 100% perfect", which is the bulk of the replies, yours excepted (snoman's ignored), there is little possibility of progress, even a discussion.

When people react to a statement as if it is an accusation, they just go into Defend mode, and nothing happens..

You are a smart guy.

Just take a look at what you are doing and how you do it, and i am certain you could improve your processing methods as regards Safety. If you get lucky, efficiency too.

The chemistry and processes you use will be exactly the same as you use now. That part works.

Only You can do this, as only You are aware of every single detail of your processing method(s).
 
aga said:
So, wearing appropriate gloves and jamming your hands into strong acid full of heavy metal ions is the best and safest way possible.

Some times yes! I to have had my arm elbow deep in a vat trying to unstop a clog in the drain.
I've also had my arm up to the elbow inside a heifer once or twice to!
I'm a country boy! :mrgreen:
 
Back
Top