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Choosing Chemical Resistant Gloves
Choosing the correct type of glove for a particular type of chemical can be both frustating and confusing. This document is designed to provide some assistance in the selection of gloves, sources for information regarding gloves, and there use in the chemical laboratory.
Types of Gloves
Chemcial use gloves come in a variety of polymers and thicknesses. The thinkness of the polymer, the way the polymer was formed, and the type of polymer govern the chemicial resistance of the glove. Each manufacturer uses a different method of forming their gloves and each manufacturer has a different supplier of polymers with different molecular weights and thus different chemical properties. The only way a manufacturer can tell the user about how well they are protected against different types of chemicals is to test each glove. This information is published for each manufacture in glove compatibility charts. As you can see proper glove selection is more than meets the eye. The basic types of gloves available are:
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Nitrile
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Butyl
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Neoprene
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Poly Vinyl Chloride
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Latex
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Natural Rubber
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Other Special Polymers
Make sure you look at the glove compatibility chart from the glove manufacture that you use. If you cannot find the compatibility chart on the manufacture's website you can write to them for a chart.
Latex Gloves
Latex gloves have been in use in laboratories for many years as general use gloves. This trend is reversing itself as new information regarding the unsuitability of latex gloves for chemical skin protection becomes more wide spread. Latex gloves offer little protection from chemicals because the pore size of the latex polymer used in gloves is highly variable in size and distrubution. This can clearly be seen if you take a latex glove and stretch it. The pattern of lighter areas and darker areas represent the variance in the polymer. The pore size of the latex molecule will also tend to pass solvents very easily. If you have ever washed glassware in the laboratory using acetone and felt a cold sensation on your skin, you have experienced the acetone permiating the latex gloves. The cold feeling is the acetone evaporating off of your skin. Had that been something like DMSO with a poison disolved in it, the poison would have been carried through the glove, onto your hand, and then into your blood stream.
This not to say that latex gloves are completely useless in the laboratory. Quite the contrary. Latex gloves are fine to use in situations involving biologicals, water based reactions, and for protection from messy non-toxic items like carbon black. (work in a fume hood is still a respiratory hazard!)
For those of you that may be wondering why latex gloves have been in the spot light lately, please checkout this page about a recent death involving latex gloves.Dimethyl Mercury
Latex gloves can cause allergy in some individuals
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