bemate
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2016
- Messages
- 72
It is not my place to try and educate you people, most of you seem to know prety well what you are doing. And having been a safety officer at my lab for quite a few years, it's very comforting to see so many of you advocate safety first.
Now, the reason I wanted to make a small note is that some of the glove use I've seen in the various videos has been poor. When using thin gloves, be it Latex, Nitrile or Vinyl, there are a few things to remember.
First, the chemical resistance indication is for a clean, uncontaminated glove. The minute you get any kind of spill on it, the resistance will likely drop, at least for some types of chemicals. With this in mind, changing gloves often is a good precaution if you are using thin gloves.
Second, sweat from the hands also degrades the chemical resistance of the glove, as mentioned above, and from what I've seen in the videos, some of these gloves stay on for extended periods of time, meaning they are most likely nowhere close to their original resistance. In my work I go through tens of pairs of gloves in a day, and one thing above all helps reducing sweat: Wash your hands well with soap and dry them before donning the gloves. This really makes tons of difference!
It might seem wasteful to change gloves all the time, but considering the risks when dealing with acids and toxic metal salts, it is a small price to pay.
To make distinction of the various gloves easier, we have a rule of thumb at my workplace: Use latex gloves if you are going to protect your sample from yourself (i.e. contamination from hands), and Nitrile if you're protecting yourself from the sample. (I work with Molecular Biology and Microbiology btw.)
Hope this is not taken as undue criticism, but I'd rather be yelled at for advicing caution and safety than for recklessness...
Now, the reason I wanted to make a small note is that some of the glove use I've seen in the various videos has been poor. When using thin gloves, be it Latex, Nitrile or Vinyl, there are a few things to remember.
First, the chemical resistance indication is for a clean, uncontaminated glove. The minute you get any kind of spill on it, the resistance will likely drop, at least for some types of chemicals. With this in mind, changing gloves often is a good precaution if you are using thin gloves.
Second, sweat from the hands also degrades the chemical resistance of the glove, as mentioned above, and from what I've seen in the videos, some of these gloves stay on for extended periods of time, meaning they are most likely nowhere close to their original resistance. In my work I go through tens of pairs of gloves in a day, and one thing above all helps reducing sweat: Wash your hands well with soap and dry them before donning the gloves. This really makes tons of difference!
It might seem wasteful to change gloves all the time, but considering the risks when dealing with acids and toxic metal salts, it is a small price to pay.
To make distinction of the various gloves easier, we have a rule of thumb at my workplace: Use latex gloves if you are going to protect your sample from yourself (i.e. contamination from hands), and Nitrile if you're protecting yourself from the sample. (I work with Molecular Biology and Microbiology btw.)
Hope this is not taken as undue criticism, but I'd rather be yelled at for advicing caution and safety than for recklessness...