Okay, maybe I’m getting old.
Used to be, exposure to concrete and its varieties never bothered me. But in 2009 I had a very bad experience. Then in 2012 it was somewhat repeated. We’re talking hands without skin here. Pain. Infirmity. Owie.
A couple of days ago I started a paying gig that involved putting up rock facing in a neighbor’s dwelling…
And that’s about as far as I got for the first session, but I was encouraged. Within a week, surely I would be done. Which is good, because there’s another gig for another neighbor this coming weekend. But then that evening my fingers swelled up like unto sausages. Pain. Stiffness. Could melting flesh be far behind? That’s what happened the last two times.
Can you develop an allergy to lime, the way you can to latex gloves? Because that’s the way it feels. I needed to get this job done. It’s not even that big a job, but it does involve several sacks of mortar.
I put off further progress for fear of losing weeks to healing. This morning on the regular Monday morning water run, I blew some money on a box of what I hope will keep the problem from becoming a … really big problem…
Yeah, I know. Real men don’t need no rubber gloves. But it seems maybe I do.
And now we’ll see how it goes.
Yep, the gloves are the way to go. It’s either that or learn how to do the work without getting your hands in the mortar.
Also, since you now have those blue nitrile gloves in stock, you can dress up like a real TSA officer for Halloween. That ought to be scary!
I wish we’d had those gloves when I was working… a different color, definitely. We had the old vinyl gloves, but it was imperative to wash after taking them off. 🙂 When you wash your hands a thousand times a day, with nasty anti-bacterial soap and hot water, the skin gets stiff, then cracks, then bleeds. Eventually it starts to peel, no matter how much lotion you put on between scrubs. And yes, it hurts like the devil.
It’s been more than ten years since I had to scrub in, but my hands still get that way easily, especially when I work in the garden. Just washing dishes does it if I’m not careful to put on some lotion afterwards each time. You’ll be much better off with the gloves.
Another thing that I have had some success with after concrete work is a vinegar rinse. Stings a bit for a minute, and one smells like pickles afterwards, but the vinegar neutralizes the alkalis in the concrete, and stops it from attacking the skin. The lime in the cement mixture is like battery acid in that it absorbs moisture from the skin and continues to cause damage. Washing is good, but neutralizing the base is even better.
I read here all the time but never have a lot to add. I am a Mechanic in my late 50s. I wear gloves all the time. Well most of the time anyway. Saves a lot on wear and tear. The nice thing about the nitrile gloves, they are usually tough enough to rinse and re use.
When I was a dealership wrench, we never ever wore gloves. Which meant sometimes there was a danger of leaving grease spots on customer upholstery. The nitrile glove thing in dealerships started shortly after I left the biz. At first I thought it was silly, but now I see the point.
…. Can you develop an allergy to lime, the way you can to latex gloves? …
If by “lime” you are actually referring to what in the UK is called cement (or more properly “ordinary portland cement”), then yes. I had a college lecturer who had to give up his career as a bricklayer after he developed an allergy to the extent even gloves could not keep him from reacting. Some ten years later he was still a brick obsessive who wondered why his wife did not take the same pleasure he did in visiting local brickworks when on family holidays.
if however by “lime” you mean lime putty (i.e.slaked quicklime left wet for a few months to “cure”) the fore runner to “cement”, still used in restoration of historic buiding as it both breaths moisture and has an interesting way of allowing some movement (resetting itself after minor movements) then I am not sure. It is still specified in some “eco” new builds for the former characeristic. Also used in true “limewash”..
Both are aggresively alkaline and will also cause direct skin burns rather than true allergic reactions. One concrete worker in the UK spent a day paddling around in a deep floor casting and lost his feet when it burned his skin, destroyed the nerves, so it stopped hurting, he carried on and lost almost all his skin to full depth below mid shin and subsequent infections led to amputation.
So be carefull, even with the gloves, wash them well after use (inside and outside) after use (assuming you will reuse them), and consider using a barrier cream as well as the gloves as you seem to be pre sensitised.
Patrick, in the UK
Joel, I’m a manly man (just ask my ego) and I change gloves about five times per work shift. I, too, thunk gloves were girly until I got tired of painful wintertime bleeding at that-little-corner of my thumbs. I wear gloves all the time now. One of these days I’m gonna try wearing vinyl one while shooting, just to see what happens (and to confound the CSI types).
What everyone else said, and take them off the way you would take off contaminated gloves in a biohazard environment. Don’t touch anything with them on, and don’t touch them. If you wash or rinse them for reuse, be careful where you deposit the rinse water because it is still nasty stuff. Don’t breathe the cement dust or track it in your house – dust/brush yourself off or take your clothes off and shake them out before you go in your house. Ditto your shoes/boots. Nitrile gloves are wonderful things. You can lose skin, nerves, eyesight, hair, clothing, shoes, whatever from contact with quicklime and portland cement. The undocumented Mexican concrete workers where I live don’t use eye or lung protection and often don’t use gloves and they don’t last long because of injuries. You can also get chemical resistant gloves but they can be kind of stiff and are not as inexpensive as nitrile. Professional and home mechanics need to wear nitrile gloves to protect sensitive electronic components and to protect themselves from the ingredients in modern vehicle fluids.
LOL You could add boxes of nitrile gloves to your Amazon wish list. Just saying…
Pffft – you need to take care of yourself: How else would others like me be able to live their dreams through you?!?!? Xxx.