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Re: the gloves are off????



Archivists should be aware of a severe medical problem with latex
gloves--allergies.  Latex allergy is not common in the population, but
where it is present it can be severe and even life-threatening.  Not
everybody is aware of having an allergy to latex, so asking someone to put
on a pair of latex gloves is a risky business.
It's probably apocryphal, but when I was in training to be an emergency
medical technician a few years ago I heard that the ministrations of
latex-gloved medical personnel could cause severe or lethal reactions in
patients.

How about vinyl or nitrile?  (I have noticed that hospitals and clinics are
increasingly moving to the use of nitrile gloves as exam and surgical gloves.)

Arel
Arel Lucas
Special Collections/Archives
Library and Center for Knowledge Management
University of California San Francisco
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/sc/
------------------------------------------------
At 12:49 PM 8/13/2002, Valerie Nye wrote:

I recently had a discussion with a patron about the use of gloves at other
repositories he had visited recently.  He said that he had been to the
National Archives and had worn latex gloves to look at archival materials
rather than cotton gloves.  He said that "they" have found that cotton
gloves contribute to more damage to documents by leaving fibers and the
latex gloves allow patrons to handle documents with more care, cutting
down on paper damage.

Have any of you changed your policy on wearing gloves?  And if so, is
there any published research concerning a move away from cotton gloves?

Thanks,

Val

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