How to Choose a Glove from the SDS

Why this matters

Most techs pick a glove by what is in the truck, and the truck holds a box of thin nitrile. Nitrile is a good general glove and a poor one against several chemicals the trades handle every week: the ketones and tetrahydrofuran in PVC primer and cement, some chlorinated degreasers, many paint strippers. Against those, a solvent can pass through an intact thin glove in minutes and sit against the skin, under a barrier that now holds it there. Nothing looks wrong. The glove is not torn, the hand is not wet, and the dose went in anyway. The skin route itself is owned elsewhere (See related: The Skin Route and What Gloves Actually Stop); this card is the procedure for turning a Safety Data Sheet into one specific glove.

Three words the charts use

• Permeation is a chemical moving through the glove material at the molecular level, with no visible hole. It is the failure you cannot see.
• Breakthrough time is how long, in a standardized lab test, before the chemical is first detected on the inside face of the material. ASTM F739 is the common US test method; the European equivalent is EN 16523-1. It is reported in minutes, often in brackets ("over 480").
• Degradation is the glove physically changing on contact: swelling, softening, stiffening, cracking. A glove can degrade without permeating fast, and permeate fast without visibly degrading.

A fourth word, penetration, means the chemical getting through a pinhole, a seam or a tear. Permeation data says nothing about it, which is why inspection before use still matters.

Step 1: Read SDS Section 8, then Sections 2, 3 and 11

Open the SDS for the exact product, not a similar one. Under the Hazard Communication Standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200 (which construction work reaches through 1926.59), Section 8 is "Exposure controls/personal protection," and it is where the manufacturer states hand protection.

You will see one of three things: a named material, sometimes with thickness and breakthrough ("butyl rubber, 0.7 mm, over 480 minutes"), which you can act on; a generic instruction ("chemical-resistant gloves"), which tells you nothing, since no glove resists everything; or nothing useful, which means working component by component.

Then check Sections 2 and 11 for "harmful in contact with skin," "absorbed through skin," or "may cause an allergic skin reaction." A skin notation on an exposure limit (marked "Skin" in OSHA's Z tables and the ACGIH list) means the chemical enters through intact skin in amounts that matter, so the glove is protecting your liver or nervous system, not just your knuckles, and you want more margin.

What breaks if you skip this: you choose a glove for irritation when the chemical's real route is systemic absorption, and you are protecting the wrong thing.

Step 2: Name the component and the contact type

Write down the main components from Section 3 with their percentage ranges. A product is rarely one chemical, and mixtures behave badly in gloves: a mixture can break through faster than any of its components alone, because one solvent swells the polymer and opens the path for the others. Most permeation charts list pure chemicals, so for a mixture you either use the manufacturer's data for that exact product or design for the worst component on the list.

Then write down the contact type:

• Splash: incidental contact you wipe off and then change gloves.
• Intermittent: hands in and out of the product through the task.
• Immersion: hands working in it.

Breakthrough data assumes continuous contact with the neat chemical on one face of the material. Splash contact with an immediate change leaves real margin under the number; immersion uses all of it.

What breaks if you skip this: a glove rated against the main solvent fails against the minor one that carries the real hazard.

Step 3: Read the glove maker's chart for that chemical

Glove manufacturers publish chemical resistance charts for their own products. Use the chart for the glove you will actually wear: "nitrile" is a family of compounds, and two makers' nitrile gloves of the same thickness can test very differently against one chemical.

Read three things for each chemical: breakthrough time, permeation rate (how fast it comes through once it starts), and the degradation rating. Then:

• Breakthrough time sets your ceiling for wear time with that glove, before any safety factor.
• A degradation rating of poor or not recommended rules the glove out regardless of breakthrough.
• "Not tested" means unrated. It does not mean acceptable.

Hedge the families, because they are where gloves fail. As a rough first screen only: nitrile generally does well with many petroleum oils and poorly with ketones, tetrahydrofuran and several chlorinated solvents; butyl generally handles ketones and esters and does poorly with many aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons; fluoroelastomer generally handles aromatic and chlorinated solvents and does poorly with ketones; multilayer laminate film resists the broadest range but fits loosely and tears easily; natural latex is poor against most organic solvents and carries an allergy risk of its own. Every one of those statements has sub-classes that break it. The chart decides, not the family name.

What breaks if you skip this: you rely on the family name, which is the most common way a glove choice fails in the field.

Step 4: Choose thickness, cuff and a second layer

Thickness is stated in mils (thousandths of an inch) or millimeters. For a given material, breakthrough time rises with thickness, which is why a 4 mil disposable and a 15 mil reusable glove of the same polymer sit on different rows of the same chart. Use the row for your thickness, not the thickest one listed.

Choose the cuff length for the reach of the task. A wrist cuff on a job where the forearm goes into a tank or a sump funnels the product inside. Working overhead, fold the cuff back an inch into a drip lip.

Where the rated glove is too loose or slippery, a common arrangement is a laminate glove under a snug outer glove for grip. Be clear which layer is the protection: the one rated for the chemical.

Dexterity is a real constraint. A glove the tech pulls off to thread a fitting protects nothing. If the only rated glove makes the task impossible, go back up the hierarchy (a different product, a tool that keeps hands out of it) rather than accepting the unrated glove. See related: The Hierarchy of Controls on a Service Call.

What breaks if you skip this: the right material at the wrong thickness, or a short cuff, gives a chart number that does not describe what is on the hand.

Step 5: Set the change schedule and the removal method

Write a wear limit for each product and glove pair: the breakthrough time divided by a safety factor for heat, flexing and mixtures. A common shop starting point is half the chart's breakthrough time for intermittent or continuous contact, and an immediate change of disposable gloves after any splash. The chart's test runs at room temperature on unflexed material; a glove working all afternoon in a hot attic will break through sooner than the number says.

Treat disposables as single use for chemical work. Inspect reusable gloves before each use by trapping air inside and squeezing for leaks, and discard them on any swelling, tackiness, cracking or color change. A reusable glove that absorbed solvent keeps releasing it inward the next day.

Remove gloves without touching their outside with bare skin: pinch and peel the first glove inside out, hold it in the gloved hand, slide a bare finger under the cuff of the second and peel it over the first. Wash with soap and water afterward, not with solvent or hand sanitizer.

What breaks if you skip this: the last minute of the task puts the product on the skin the glove protected for an hour.

Worked example: PVC primer and cement on an irrigation manifold

An irrigation tech solvent-welds a dozen PVC joints on a manifold in a valve box, about forty minutes of work, hands in contact with primer and cement on and off throughout.

Step 1. The primer's SDS Section 8 says only "chemical-resistant gloves." Section 3 lists tetrahydrofuran (THF), methyl ethyl ketone, acetone and cyclohexanone. Section 11 notes skin irritation and absorption.

Step 2. The governing components are THF and the ketones. Contact is intermittent: brush in, wipe, re-dip.

Step 3. The tech reads the glove maker's chart for the disposable nitrile in the truck, and for a laminate glove the shop also stocks:

GLOVE MAKER CHART EXCERPT (illustrative values)
Glove: disposable nitrile, 4 mil
Chemical              Breakthrough   Degradation
Tetrahydrofuran       under 1 min    Poor
Methyl ethyl ketone   under 1 min    Poor
Acetone               under 1 min    Poor

Glove: multilayer laminate film, 2.7 mil
Tetrahydrofuran       over 480 min   Not rated
Methyl ethyl ketone   over 480 min   Not rated
Acetone               over 480 min   Not rated

The values are illustrative of the shape real charts take; read the chart for your own glove. The nitrile fails on degradation, which settles it before breakthrough is considered. The laminate rates far past the task time on breakthrough but is "not rated" on degradation, which needs a call to the maker before it becomes the shop's written answer.

Step 4. The laminate is loose and slippery, and the tech needs grip to hold a fitting against the push. The shop's arrangement is laminate as the protective layer under a snug nitrile outer glove for grip, with the outer understood as a handling layer that will soften and gets changed when it does. The valve box is shallow, so wrist cuffs are enough; a deep box where the forearm goes in would need a gauntlet.

Step 5. Wear limit is half of 480 minutes, so 240 minutes of contact. Forty minutes of intermittent work is inside that by a wide margin.

The failure this prevents: the tech in thin nitrile alone feels nothing for the first several joints, then notices the fingertips going tacky. By then the solvent has been inside the glove for most of the job. The tacky feel is degradation arriving after permeation already happened.

What changes the answer: if the job is two joints and a wipe, a shop may decide on nitrile with an immediate change after any contact, because splash contact with immediate removal is a different exposure from forty minutes of intermittent work. That is a judgment the SDS and chart together support, not one the family name supports. And the glove does nothing for the vapor: primer in an enclosed pump room or a deep pit is a breathing-zone decision made separately (See related: How to Ventilate a Small Space You Are Working In).

How to verify you got this right

• The choice is written next to the product: governing component, glove material, thickness, wear limit, and where the data came from.
• At the end of a chemical task, look at the glove. Swelling, tackiness or a color change means the limit is too long or the glove is wrong, and the entry changes that day.
• Re-run the selection when Section 3 changes. A reformulated product under the same name can carry a different solvent package.
• In general industry, 29 CFR 1910.138 makes the employer select hand protection against the task, conditions, duration and hazards, and 1910.132(d) requires a written PPE hazard assessment certification; construction reaches PPE through 1926.95. Under 1910.132(h) the employer pays for the gloves.

References

• OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.1200 Appendix D (SDS sections) and 29 CFR 1910.138 (hand protection); 29 CFR 1926.95 for construction
• ASTM F739, standard test method for permeation of liquids and gases through protective clothing materials
• See related: The Skin Route and What Gloves Actually Stop
• See related: HazCom + SDS (Chemical Right-to-Know)
• See related: The Hierarchy of Controls on a Service Call