Tray Processing Film: Gloves or No Gloves?

[analoguey]

Powdered Nitrile gloves - even when I am processing in a daylight tank.
(I bought a box of 500 for my developing/printing)
I change the gloves for every session, or even breaks in between the session.

And yes, even with gloves on, you can make out the slippery feel of dev, versus not-so of the fixer etc.,
If it its good enough for surgeons, its good enough for this!

For printing, I haven't used tongs - but then I havent printed larger than 5x7" either, so I am not sure what might work well there!
Even with tongs, I would first wear gloves.

You could probably keep one hand ungloved for other tasks - I tried it, but found it unnecessary and an encumbrance.

Only difficulty/issue so far was the timer usage, but with the metronome, I suppose it could get better.

After moving film/paper from dev to stop(water), I rise the gloves off under running water, and then post stop move it to fix. Again a quick wash. I havent do more than two negatives/print on timed session yet - I am finding that I can concentrate best when its 1 or 2, and I can spare the additional time to develop the rest.

[Donald Qualls]

I first got my fingers in the Dektol in 1969, and I've used gloves only for one process: B&W reversal, in which I want to avoid contact with the sulfuric acid/potassium dichromate bleach solution (the dichromate is carcinogenic, and skin damage from the acid will only make it more likely to do long term harm). I have no skin sensitivity to metol (I'd have known it decades ago) and don't use pyrogallol; there's nothing else in my chemistry in sufficient quantities to worry me. I find it telling that, unlike many other occupations, more than a century of silver gelatin darkroom photographers never had an "occupational disease" until rapid access x-ray processing brought on ailments related to emulsion hardeners (chemical relatives of formalin).

Wet plate is another matter -- ether is bad, potassium cyanide fixer is much more dangerous (especially given the developer is acidic) -- and Daguerreotype with traditional mercury-fume development -- no thanks! But since dry plate came along, the most hazardous chemical most B&W photographers have had to deal with was the concentrate for their stop bath (even if they don't start from glacial acetic acid, it's plenty strong) -- barring specific allergic sensitivities, of course.

[mike rosenlof]

I use gloves. The blue ones from Costco. Nitrile, I think.

[Tracy Storer]

Thin, good-snug fitting Nitrile gloves I buy from Best Glove. If they are thin, and fit well, you can easily peel one sheet from a stack of negatives even in slippery developer. Takes only a little getting used to. For me, they key is fit, and spending a few extra moments making sure the gloves aren't baggy at your finger tips.

[f/90]

Lab guy here again.

Usage of gloves is required for all chemistry. Apart from caffeenol, there is no developer that can be used without gloves, everyone is toxic in one way or another.

The slippery feeling of developer stems from the saponification of cell membranes and the likes, basically the developer is etching your skin away, even if it doesn't feel like it. Speaking of feeling: If your hands feel clean, they are nowhere near clean, in reality they are still badly contaminated.

Is this not taught in photo classes normally?

Cheers

f/90

[jp]

Photo class isn't for learning safety. It is some mix of teen hormones and darkness.

[Doremus Scudder]

I wear gloves when working with pyro developers. I wear them for the entire developing session, washing them on my hands between batches. I've gotten used to wearing them now, and would likely use them with other developers as well now. Unloading holders with gloves on is a bit more troublesome, but doable. Shuffling sheets in the solutions is not a problem. One does have to be more careful of contamination, since it is not as easy to feel small droplets of the chemistry on the gloves. I make sure I wash them well and dry them thoroughly between batches. Yes, one could just toss them like a doctor would between exams, but that seems so wasteful to me... One pair will work fine for several sessions.

I don't usually wear gloves when printing with "conventional" developers (MQ/PQ) but do try to minimize exposure by using tongs, etc. I can print up to 16x20 and never touch a print with my hands easily. 20x24 takes some handling from time to time, but not that much so exposure is minimal. If I'm using glycin or other exotic developing agents that are more toxic, I'll either make sure I don't get my hands wet or don gloves.

And, although we should use care when using chemicals, we shouldn't exaggerate the risks either (I've never heard of anyone dying from saponification...). Certainly gloves are the safest, but getting your fingers in the stop bath is not as dangerous as getting salad dressing on them Knowing what you are dealing with and treating it appropriately is key. In lieu of that, wear gloves.

Oh, and do wear gloves when cleaning the oven or the toilet! Those chemicals are really dangerous.

Best,

Doremus

[f/90]

Curious, can't seem to find any toxicity data on glycin.

The saponification bit was to explain that not everything that feels ok is ok. As the usual stop bath is either acetic acid or citric acid, of course there is no problem here. Fixer is not the problem, either. It is the developers that should never ever been allowed contact with skin. Metol is a carcinogen, hydroquinone is just plain toxic (the oxidised version, benzoquinone, is known to cause leukemia and is badly hemotoxic). Same goes for pretty much any other developer used, coffee being probably the only notable exception.

As I never attended a photography school, I assumed this was common knowledge. I surprises me it is not.

Greetings

f/90

[Drew Wiley]

I originally bought glycin from a pharmaceutical supplier, a fact which in itself informs you that it's not physiologically inert.

[Donald Qualls]

Toxicity is related to concentration. For instance, Alka-Seltzer is a solution of aspirin and various buffering agents; at the recommended dosage, it's therapeutic (for most folks; there are a few rare souls with serious allergies to aspirin). Make up a solution of Alka-Seltzer at four or five times the package directions, and you'll start to get into the hazard zone, where toxicity of the aspirin is a concern. Ten times package concentration is enough to kill some folks.

The same thing is true of developer chemicals; p-aminophenol, metol, hydroquinone, phenidone, even glycin are present in such low concentrations in most developers not to be worrisome (again, if they were a significant cancer concern, there'd have been reports of "cluster" outbreaks among photographers, and there haven't been, even among darkroom workers who might have had their hands in solutions literally all day long for decades). I'm much more concerned about my unavoidable, long term exposure to second hand tobacco residues from living with four smokers than I am about developers I'll contact for a few minutes at a time, a few times a month. Now, if I were using pyrogallol, CD-4, or a high-glycin formula on a regular basis, I might well glove up, even for tank development (I do wear gloves when processing C-41 in tanks).