Using Surgical Gloves with Amidol and Pyro

[Geary Lyons]

"full-face respirator that will allow me to breathe outside air. This respirator is the one often used in auto painting shops and usually costs about $575. "

Surely you are kidding? Have you ever spent any time at all wearing a full face respirator? Unless you are so sloppy that every wall of the DR will be dripping in pyro and/or amidol, this is a bit "over-the-top". You are not planning to develop film or paper using the HVLP gun method are you? For modern isocyanate paints atomized, this makes absolute sense, but pyro or amidol in trays or drums?

The danger is the dry chem's. Wear your gloves. Wear a standard dust mask or filter respirator to mix, if you feel you must. Don't bathe in your developer. Basic common sense in handling photo chems is all you need, that is, unless you are a "wanna be" hazmat clean-up crew member ;-)!! Use that $575 for something useful!!

Cheers,
Geary

[David A. Goldfarb]

If you order supplies from B&H, they sell them too.

[Michael Gordon]

I wear nitrile gloves with pyro. You can get them at any Home Depot in addition to the sources already mentioned.

[Donald Hutton]

I can just imagine my wife's reaction if I emerged from the bowels of our house wearing a full-face respirator....! However, if she found out that I had spent $600 on it, I'm certain that she'd insist that I wear it 24/7 to get full value out of it.

[Gregory Gomez]

Geary,

I already have a heart condition, so I have to be very careful. Also, I am very sensitive to fumes of any kind. For example, when I clean my bathroom, I have to wear a respirator so I am not affected by the chemicals, such as bleach.

By the way, I do own a HVLP gun. : > }

Best regards,

Greg

[Gregory Gomez]

Okay, maybe it's just me.

I already own a very good respirator that I bought from Home Depot, and it doesn't seem to do a very good job at blocking chemical fumes, even for a short duration.

Now, it won't be uncommon for me to spend up to eight hours in my darkroom, which will be a somewhat confined space when it's finished. If I am not careful, breathing fumes for that period of time will give me chest pains for sure.

You know, I am no longer a spring chicken, so maybe I need to be a little more careful than the average. Maybe it's better being a scared chicken than a dead duck?

[Geary Lyons]

Greg,
Actually, I understand. I have restored, including painted, a couple of old sports cars. Wearing the respirator for even half an hour in a paint booth is, for me, just plain miserable. But if that is what you have to do to work in the DR, my hat's off to you for the perseverance!

Although we will all reach the dead duck stage, no sense in buying a "FastPass"!!

Cheers,
Geary

[phil sweeney]

You can get nitrile gloves at a pharmacy. I get tight fitting ones for handling negatives and larger ones for general use mixing etc.

[Donald Qualls]

And to answer a question that didn't get covered above -- nitrile is a synthetic rubber compound with much greater resistance to chemicals and petroleum oils than natural latex. The bad news is, it's also much less flexible than latex in its pure form, so it's common to mix the two -- the higher the percentage of nitrile in the mix, the greater the resistance and the lower the elasticity. Fortunately, gloves don't require a huge amount of elasticity (though you might have to buy a couple boxes before you get the right size for a good fit, snug but not so tight as to be difficult to put on).

I recommend "lightly powdered" gloves; these are coated with talc or corn starch, which acts as a lubricant and greatly simplifies putting the gloves on, and I also suggest choosing a size that's snug enough there's no wrinkling or "puddling" of the material around the fingers -- you should be able to feel a dime with the gloves on and call it for heads or tails (assuming you can do that with bare fingers, of course).

Also, FWIW, a significant fraction of the population is allergic to *latex* -- and almost none of those have problems with nitrile.

[paulr]

"I already own a very good respirator that I bought from Home Depot, and it doesn't seem to do a very good job at blocking chemical fumes, even for a short duration."

the issues are the fit around your face (does it leak air around there?) and the type of cartridges. there are a million different kinds of cartridges designed to filter out different kinds of toxins. it would be worth talking to an industrial safety exptert do determine what to get. at minimum for photo you'd need one dust and mist, and acid vapors. Not sure what else, but there's a whole laundry list of options.