Nitrile or polyurethane coated gloves in archives

In an effort to reduce our consumption of disposable nitrile gloves
used in cataloguing our archival collections, we at the Canadian
Centre for Architecture are looking into purchasing a washable nylon
glove with either a nitrile or polyurethane coating on the fingers.
The polyurethane coated glove is a little thinner and gives more
flexibility and comfort to the wearer than the nitrile-coated glove,
but I am wary of having polyurethane make contact with archival
documents and photographs during handling.  Could any polyurethane
or polyurethane degradation components transfer to the documents and
photos?  Would the gloves be acceptable when new but could the
polyurethane begin to break down after several washings and then
become damaging?

Cataloguers find standard cotton gloves to be too awkward when they
are paging through hundreds of documents.  The slight tackiness of a
plastic coating on the fingers makes handling much easier.

Karen Potje
Chef, Conservation/Restauration
Head, Conservation/Preservation
Centre Canadien d'Architecture
1920, rue Baile
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3H 2S6
514-939-7001 ext 1236


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 29:29
                 Distributed: Sunday, December 13, 2015
                       Message Id: cdl-29-29-015
                                  ***