Posted By Paul Leadbetter
Have you given any thought to trying to eliminate the need for gloves?

If redesign of the process is impracticable, and gloves are necessary, nitrile gloves are probably your best bet as they have good chemical resistance. However, all nitrile gloves are not the same and you should get some from a number of manufacturers for a trial. Check the gloves for breakdown (they may go sticky or stiff) and permeation (when the gloves will be unchanged) under your actual conditions of use as the chemical resistance charts of glove manufacturers have only a passing resemblance to reality and should not be relied upon!

Once the gloves has been decided upon, do not allow your purchasing dept to go to another manufacturer (because they are cheaper) as the performance of the gloves is likely to be very different.

Paul

Posted By Ron Young
Could be wrong but I recall that nitrile disolved in MEK and that latex was more appropriate for short term use. A call to a company like ARCO can confirm this

Posted By Catman
Two of the biggest glove manufacturers will actually help you carry out a thorough assessment of your glove requirements, prescribe appropriate gloves and provide you with written evidence of the assessment.

I worked closely with one of them and they used information from our scenario in development of a new glove.

Clearly they do it to sell gloves but in my experience the service is worth its weight in gold as gloves can be a pain to specify.

Only thing is you will have to put up with a glove salesman invading your office for an hour or so.

Cheers
TW

Posted By Paul Leadbetter
I stand corrected; sorry! From your description, are gloves really needed?

Paul

Posted By Chris Packham
The only glove suitable for MEK is from butyl rubber.

Even these, relatively expensive, gloves are only class 5 (i.e. permeation breakthrough to EN347-3 is 240-480 minutes). Bear in mind that this is a value achieved in static laboratory test and that the test to EN374 is actually specified at the wrong temperature. The test also does not take account of degradation, flexing etc. Thus the manufacturers' published breakthrough time is not an indication of what you will get in practice but merely shows which is the optimum glove. What you may get in practice can be quite different.

In a pilot test we carried out with a U.K. university, testing glove performance under actual working conditions, performance varied widely and bore little resemblance to what had been published by the manufacturers. In one test with nitrile gloves and xylene (manufacturer's published permeation breakthrough time was 36 minutes) the actual performance varied from over 2 hours to under 10 minutes, depending upon the task being carried out.

For those who haven't been involved with this before, permeation is the invisible passage of the chemical through the glove at a molecular level. It is undetectable by the wearer and not to be confused with degradation, which is the actual destruction of the glove material by the chemical.

If you need more on this contact me direct.
Chris

Posted By halesowen Baggie
Is Mek Banned

Posted By Steve Holliday
As Chris says MEK is not banned but a number of industries have restricted its use. This is due to data that suggests it may lead to birth defects, see http://www.ccohs.ca/osha...icals/chem_profiles/mek/

MEK is easily substituted for a less harmful solvent (isopropyl alcohol (IPA) or ethanol) in many printing applications. Speak to you printer manufacturers to advise.

Steve

Posted By Chris Packham
Take a look at my comments on MSDS in the thread of that name. This should explain why safety data sheets might not actually tell you what you need to know!

Chris

Posted By halesowen Baggie
Thanks everybody for the info
Paul

Posted By John Webster
Don't times change.

I used to use MEK day in, day out for cleaning prior to jointing PVC and ABS pipework. Tipped onto a labwipe held in the bare hand!

I dread to think what damage I might have done back in the unenlightened past. Nobody really knew or cared that some of these things might have long term health effects, if it didn't knock you over or burn you it must be OK, was the attitude.

Did we really clean with benzene, separate with hand shaken and vented carbon tetrachloride, only wear a mask if the acid or ammonia fumes made you cough too much, hand wash flasks of unspecified poly-chlorinated polyphenols in acetone, clean old engine oil from our hands with paraffin. As for asbestos....

CoSHH may be a pain, but with hindsight I think I prefer today.

Posted By Richie
According to 'a University' guide, a suitable glove for use with MIEK would be Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA). Likewise, a suitable glove for use with MEK would be PVA.

Information Source is free here:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~p...afety/ppe/gloves/ad.html

Richie