Ha ha. Some of us have to wear gloves, especially when handling many metals, varnished wood, and photographs.
As a kid, I remember devarnishing wood an my piano bench had a nice butt print unvarnished on it. During summer events, I also stuck to varnished wooden chairs. Using axes and paddles tended to cause blisters as they stuck. When I worked at the Public Archives of Canada as a summer student, my handprints were all over the top of the registrar's desk.
I need to wear either plastic eyeglass frames or stainless steel or titanium. Otherwise the temple pieces turn into fine wires and break. I played in the band and took off the lacquer of my trumpet and ate through the back of a watch once. Unfortunately, the back of the watch also served as a conductor in the watch circuit so it died before I got completely through (metal compounds don't conduct electricity very well at room temperature.)
After I joined IPI, I got a call from my old lab at the National Archives of Canada (they had just changed names) asking me to participate in an experiment. They sent down two sheets of cold rolled steel. First I was to wear plastic gloves of 30 minutes, then remove them and touch one of the plates. Then I was to wash my hands with a non-ionic surfactant (for 30 seconds), rinse under running tap water for a minute, and then rinse in distilled water for another 30 seconds. Let my hands air dry for 5 minutes and touch the second plate. Put on gloves, to wrap the plates back up and ship them back to Ottawa.
They labelled both plates and incubated them at high temperature and humidity following a standard protocol from the steel industry in a test for so-called "rusters". In the industry this test is used to screen out employees who can't touch non-stainless steel without causing it to rust.
All 26 test subjects caused the plate in the glove test to rust, but I was the only person to cause the plate in the wash test to rust as well. The problem, according to the steel industry is that some of us have a relatively high saline content to our sweat, although other compounds can contribute. So I promote the activity in an oxygen starvation cell making things rust by making oxygen and humidity act as a more potent oxidizing source.
Polaroid says that diet and prescription drugs can also affect activity specifically with photographs and apparently their favorite guinea pig stopped deteriorating Polaroid prints when his doctor changed his high blood pressure medication.
Anyway, some of us really have to wear plastic gloves to safely handle collection objects. Be nice to me or I'll touch your car. ;-)
-Doug
Douglas Nishimura
Image Permanence Institute
Rochester Institute of Technology
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marybeth S Tomka
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 4:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] the use of gloves
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