Wearing nitrile (rubber) gloves during your e-juice making is always a safe move, and a must if dealing with nicotine. But the tip that i want to give you all is that nitrile gloves start to permeate after about 9 minutes. That means that things start to seep through them. This can create a safety concern, especially when working with your nic base. I work as a hazmat specialist and i change my gloves about every 6 minutes to stay safe!
Got some sauce with that? I've always seen permeation tables with much higher times than that depending on the chemical in contact, never heard anything about permeation after no contact with anything but hands.
I found some data here. Table 3 on page 5 contains breakthrough times for 3 different brands of gloves for pure nicotine.
Nice find. So depending on the brand, they permeate after 6-15 min of contact with pure nicotine if I understand correctly. Doesn't seem to be a concern for our purposes...
I personally don't even use gloves, at worst I'll get a drop of 100 mg/mL on my hand that I wash instantly with a lot of water and soap. I don't mean to discourage people from using gloves, I just personally don't think they're all that important for the average DIYer.
I am an autobody tech. After 15 minutes of wearing nitrile your supposed to change. Irrelevant of solutions contacted. When you contact solutions and solvents your degradation multiplies.
I don't doubt it's the procedure at your job, maybe the applications you use them for are rougher on them or they are just being extra cautious. But I've never seen any source to back up the claim that nitrile gloves will degrade that quickly simply by being worn. We're just mixing juice: handling plastic pipettes, glass bottles etc and maybe getting a drop of nic on our hands from time to time. Nitrile gloves will provide more than enough protection against the nicotine dilutions we use, for a long enough time.
Work at s hospital. There's a reason you sometimes double bag and change your gloves often.
Is this due to stretching? Can't just get a big size?
Good question. Stretching, heat, sweat and the oils from your skin help break down the Integrity of nitrile gloves. So getting a larger size wouldn't really help.
Thanks.
Is there a type of glove that you are aware of that that may retain integrity better?
I'm glad you mention this as I was considering washing them and using them inside out! Not anymore of course. Should stop being lazy and get some more...though to be honest, I've been skipping gloves recently...only a 72mg mixture here, use a syringe to grab 1+ish ml and squirt it in the bottle.
I used to get dry skin on my hands, especially around my knuckles after leakage of eliquid from leaky attys. Not so much these days, I probably built a tolerance to it. Been going pretty heavy on the vaping trying out different coils since I got into building...and since I discovered fasttech prices and having too many atties to build for and test out. I get it's toxic but...I wash my hands. Living dangerously by laziness probably.
What if the liquid is quickly rinsed off with water, does the 9 minute rule still apply?
If I was dealing with strong bases or acids I'd definitely change my gloves every 9 minutes, but as I'm dealing with max 100mg/ml nicotine base, I don't bother. I don't usually even handle the nicotine base for more than 5 minutes, and if I accidentally spill something, I rinse it off with water immediately and continue working.
Is Juice really that corrosive to your skin? I've started building my own coils and wicking and occasionally get juice on my hands changing coils, topping up liquid etc. I only really use high VG liquid as a rule but I've never worn any form of hand protection. Sometimes I'll wash them afterwards but most times don't bother.
It depends on the nicotine content (barring sensitivity to any of the ingredients). Personally, my 3mg stuff isn't a problem. 18-24mg makes my hand itch a bit. For 100mg nic base, abso-freakin-lutely wear gloves.
My own experience. YMMV.
Ah I see, that does make sense actually. I use around 3MG of nicotine which is probably why I've never had any issues. 100mg!? That must be to cut with flavour or something, right? I can imagine a hit of that would likely knock you out at least.