Skin Irritaion caused by Nitrile Gloves

Manufacturer: We are manufacturing industrial gloves using carboxylated NBR (Nitrile) latex. Lately we've been receiving complaints from the market about our gloves having skin irritation problems among users. Our extensive investigation revealed that our proprietary curatives used especially the accelerators are not the causes.

What else in the NBR latex do you think could have caused the skin irritation problem?

John Woon (Senior Latex Consultant): It is well known that some surfactants could cause skin problems to some individuals on prolonged use. Therefore if your gloves are not sufficiently leached, the surfactants inherently present in the base latex could cause skin irritation to some users of the gloves especially when their hands sweat. Usually these users find gloves made from synthetic latices to be more troublesome than those made from NR latex since a comparatively higher level of surfactants is required for emulsion polymerization.

Sodium alkyl sulphate is particularly bad for skin.

Some chain-stopper used in polymerization which is of the dithiocarbamate type could also be another possible causative agent.

It has been reported that the carboxylic acids used for carboxylation such as Methacrylic acid/MAA could affect skin, eyes and mucous membranes. Again, proper leaching is required to remove the residual MAA.