Hands and Solvents

It is not necessary to explain that beautiful hands as a means of expression of personality have at least the same importance as a beautiful face or beautiful hair. Therefore, this guide will deal with rough hands and what you can do about it.

Proper cleaning of the hands

Rough and stressed hands also need proper care to leave the skin supple. Of excellent importance is an expedient cleaning of the hands. It must be remembered that industrialization and the associated mechanization have brought it with them that the hands are often exposed to a high degree of stress. If prolonged contact with water is not exactly good for the skin, the danger is even greater if chemicals have to be added for technical reasons. These can be cleaning agents (soap, detergents) or paints, oils, furthermore the water can contain metal salts, as is usual in galvanic workshops for the surface refinement of metals, or the skin comes into intensive contact with solvents, during chemical cleaning with clothing, in the paint industry, during degreasing of objects, in short, our skin is exposed to environmental conditions which can no longer be reasonably described as natural. It goes without saying that the cleaning process should not put additional strain on the already stressed skin. In particular, one must avoid stripping the skin of fat. In some professions, such as paint shops, it is not always possible to clean the skin in a desirable manner with soap and water alone, and nothing is more obvious in such cases than to remove the polluting material with the associated solvent.

Hands and diluents

Anyone who has ever painted or varnished in their own household knows how easy it is to clean their hands afterwards with turpentine, turpentine substitute, thinner and the like. However, since the use of solvents to clean hands not infrequently leads to skin diseases, there has been no lack of voices calling for hand cleaning with solvents to be banned altogether. For practical reasons, however, it will not always be possible to avoid using solvents for skin cleaning in certain cases. Carried out in the right way, this will certainly not cause much harm. Unfortunately, it is often done in firms and factories in such a way that a makeshift container, such as a large tin can or the like, is placed next to the washing facilities, in which a large quantity of solvent is present, and before washing with soap and water, the hands are dipped into the solvent as if it were water, and the hands are literally pre-washed in it. The solvent is then soon dirty. Since several people usually clean themselves in the same container and solvents are not germicidal, infectious skin diseases can easily be transmitted in this way. Where cleaning with solvents cannot be avoided, clean, fresh solvent must be dripped from a small container onto a clean, new cloth, and skin cleaning must be carried out with this cloth, and only the disturbing dirt in the coarse must be removed quickly.

Proper cleaning of hands with thinner.

The rags once used must be disposed of in a closable tin container. Particular attention should be paid to this if the solvents evaporate easily and there is a risk of fire, which is considerable with some solvents. The particular danger to the skin from solvents is, on the one hand, that some of them can cause eczema. On the other hand, however, they all dissolve the fat out of the skin, which is indispensably necessary to keep it healthy. Once the hands have been washed with warm water and soap, it is absolutely necessary for people who have contact with solvents to rub the skin with a greasy skin cream (a so-called matt cream or day cream usually does not contain any grease and is therefore not suitable for this purpose). However, we must not believe that the so-called greasing replaces the skin fat lost to the skin, because there is no cream that somehow resembles the complicatedly structured fats of the human skin in chemical terms. A skin cream forms a protective layer on the skin, which protects the remaining skin fat from further washing out.Of particular importance in recent times are ointments designed to protect the skin from contact with harmful substances during work, in such a way that the skin is covered with a thin film that insulates it, like an invisible glove. Of course, it is necessary to use protective ointments and creams of different types, depending on the harmful substances involved. It is obvious to us that a protective ointment that is effective against grease solvents (turpentine, gasoline, etc.) does not have to be effective against pollutants in aqueous solution or water itself. In fact, it is also the case that those pharmaceutical companies engaged in the manufacture of such products have come out with various types of skin protective ointments and provide us with detailed instructions as to which ointment should be used for a particular hazard.