White gloves

Time to throw in my two cents into the white gloves thread (and make
some confessions at the same time.) The late Dr. Klaus Hendriks did
some studies a few years ago with respect to the corrosiveness of
fingerprints on photographs. In the literature he found references
to a problem in the steel industry in which certain people caused
steel to rust. The industry developed a test method for screening
out people whom they referred to as "rusters." The steel industry
uses an incubation test in which the subject wears a pvc glove for
something like 5 or 10 minutes and then touches a polished plate of
rolled steel. The subject then washes with a non-ionic surfactant,
rinses for 5 or 10 minutes (!) in running water and then finishes
with a distilled water rinse. After letting the hand air dry for a
few minutes the subject then touches another sheet of the steel. The
plates are incubated (I don't recall the conditions) and examined
for rust.

Now for the confessions. Out of twenty subjects, several could rust
a plate after the "glove sweat" trial. I was the only one who also
rusted the steel after such a thorough wash. I know from experience
that that my skin will strip varnish very readily. (I stick to
varnished chairs on warm days and devarnished the registrar's desk
when I worked in Klaus' lab.) For people like myself, cotton gloves
don't do anything and I need to wear plastic or latex gloves when
handling metals and photographs.

Klaus talked a little about this research at the PMG meeting in
Ottawa in 1991 and I believe he included it in his talk at ARSAG
that same year. Brian Thurgood may be able to say more about the
topic (although he's hard to contact since he is working on the CAC
meeting in June.) Joe Iraci, and Paul Begin (now at CCI) were
working with Klaus at this time and could probably provide more
information with regard to published information.

-Douglas Nishimura
Image Permanence Institute

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:91
                 Distributed: Wednesday, April 23, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-91-001
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