Gloves

This is a brief response to Karen Motylewski's posting concerning
gloves.

My interpretation of the previous poster's concern about the,
"safety of latex gloves"  was that numerous people have allergic
reactions to intimate contact with latex.  This has become such a
liability that most medical personnel are discarding latex in favor
of other materials for patient care.  Because of that reason I use
unpowdered vinyl gloves in the lab.  As far as those rubber-dotted
cotton gloves go, do not use them on metals.  We have numerous
examples of silver objects in our collections that have beautiful
tiny sulphide corrosion "dots" because the curator or art handlers
have used these things!

David Harvey
Associate Conservator,
Metals & Arms
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Williamsburg, Virginia  23187-1776  USA
757-220-7039

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:11
                   Distributed: Friday, July 17, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-12-11-011
                                  ***