Carrie,

Any staff that wants to experiment with a product such as HANDS-OFF should
first get all technical information on the product. Then do a scientific
assessment of it first, before subjecting actual collections to it. My questions of
this product would be: Are there any residue from this product that transfer to
collections, if so what? and, how loong does this product last? Wouldn't it
vary between individuals? How do you control that? Set an egg timer?

One of the simplest tests to check for residues that might come off of
plastic gloves or even used cotton ones is to press and wipe the fingers across a
very clean plate of glass. If there is a visible transfer, then you have a
problem. This method was recently suggested by Scott Williams, a conservation
scientist at the Canadian Conservation Institute, who evaluated some of those
plastic or rubber dotted gloves that some of us had observed problems with (
corrosion spots on metals, transfer of material to glass, etc.). Scott went further
and did some anaytical work and found that the plastic in the dots in the
gloves that he tested had Polyvinyl Chlorides (PVC) in them as a plasticizer.
Chlorides are extremely reactive to moisture and form organic acids very readily
even just in exposure to air. This is not good for most collections.

Scott, of course, conducted his testing on glass slides or plates, and not on
collections!

The same test method can be applied to bare hands, of course.

Recently another discussion about gloves has emerged in the conservation
community on the ConsDist List about certain Nitrile gloves that incurr the same
problem on account of chlorides being used in their manufacture.

So all of us who handle and interact with collections have to be constantly
aware that whatever is on our hands has the potential to transfer to the
artifact or object.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch Street
Denver, CO 80222
303-300-5257
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