Mixing from Powder, Safety and Disposal

GLS said:

Safety standards have gotten more strict compared with decades ago. Personally I think gloves should be worn when handling any chemical solutions, especially aqueous ones as those can easily be absorbed into your skinacid).

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Nay, nay and thrice nay.

Bit of background...I'm senior science technician at a large secondary school. All the official recommendations are that it is very rare one actually needs to wear gloves and we are discouraged STRONGLY from giving gloves to our students unless it is actually necessary.

The majority of the chemicals involved in B&W photography don't require gloves. And the attitude that "gloves should always be worn" just breeds ignorance of risk assessment. The biggest "danger" with most developers is mild staining on the fingers, or ingestion if you lick your fingers or handle food. Mind you, a capful of ID11 or XTOL isn't actually going to do you any harm...it's just really not a good idea. And you can lull yourself into a false sense of security by wearing gloves and then not being careful about touching your face (same with COVID). "any aqueous solution"...better get those gloves on when you stirr sugar into your tea or add powder to your washing machine...and honestly there could be more nasties in the washing powder than the ingredients to make developer.

The one *common* chemical I would suggest wearing gloves for is any thiosulphate based fixers because a good few people have allergic skin reactions and get itchy.

If you're able to get hold of potassium dichromate and concentrated sulphuric acid to make your own reversal bleach, that's another matter....they're fairly nasty. I actually would not recommend people without laboratory training mix up dichromate bleach.

A dust filter/face mask is not a bad idea, especially if you have any lung issues. The key word is ventilation. If you make a mistake and spill your powder and a cloud of dust appears....you want it dispersed by air movement. In practice a good open window or two and a room that isn't too enclosed is sufficient. Safety specs/goggles will protect your eyes in case you drop something in your solution and it splashes.

Truth is we all practice chemistry every day. There cannot be a person here who has never dissolved β-D-Fructofuranosyl α-D-glucopyranoside in a hot liquid. We've all added ethanol-ethoyxate and Amine Oxide to cold or tepid water....many have added sodium hypochlorite to water and put stuff in the solution intended for a baby!....and even gargled sodium chloride solution we've made. We dissolve sodium laureth sulphate and rub it into ourselves! It is likely you've mixed acetic acid and sodium chloride, and dissolved both in water at differing times. We use sodium hydrogen carbonate in stuff most of us eat every day. We've probably all generated syn-propanethial-S-oxide in sufficient quantities to irritate our eyes but don't wear any protective clothing for any of these. Oh the shock and horror!

Be sensible, do consider a mask or extra ventilation if you're mixing/dissolving in large quantities or if you have a respiratory illness. Consider safety specs/goggles if you're concerned about splashes. Do use a well ventilated room. Use gloves if you're handling strong acids or dichromates...and consider gloves if you're handling thiosulphate salts or solutions. Some of the chemicals in developers can have a sensitising effect over time especially if you do a lot of darkroom work....meaning that people who do it for a living on an industrial scale sometimes develop skin or respiratory allergies to those chemicals having started out without any sensitivity. So consider how much you're using. Are you developing 100 films a year or 100 films month? Are you spending 3 hours every other weekend making darkroom prints or 6 hours a day?

Agulliver said:

Truth is we all practice chemistry every day. <snip>
So consider how much you're using. Are you developing 100 films a year or 100 films month? Are you spending 3 hours every other weekend making darkroom prints or 6 hours a day?

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This is probably the most sensible post yet in this thread. The only chemistry I've used gloves for in my darkroom is dichromate bleach -- I mixed the dichromate solution outdoors on a breezy day, wearing gloves and safety goggles, and wore both when mixing the final bleach immediately before processing B&W slides, as well as during the actual processing. I wear safety glasses when mixing Parodinal as well (sodium hydroxide can blind you instantly with a drop small enough not to reliably trigger a blink) -- but working in a room with a sink, I've never bothered with gloves for that.

Honestly, I now take more precautions to protect my septic tank than I do my skin -- if I were going to have a bad reaction to Dektol, I'm pretty sure I'd have known it by now (first exposure in 1969, a couple years I've made multiple dozens of prints without gloves). Soon I'll have to find a local disposal point for used fixer (when I lived in town, I one-shotted plain hypo and put it down the drain, but now, septic tank), but I've had my fingers in that for decades, too.

I'm using gloves more than I used to, but its as much to keep my hands from drying too much due to repeated immersion as it is to protect them from initial exposure to chemicals.
There is one further benefit though to wearing nitrile gloves. It is quicker and easier to rinse them thoroughly than it is to rinse bare skin. It is easier to avoid accidentally getting fixer when/where you don't want it on your prints when you wear gloves.

Agulliver said:

Nay, nay and thrice nay.

Bit of background...I'm senior science technician at a large secondary school. All the official recommendations are that it is very rare one actually needs to wear gloves and we are discouraged STRONGLY from giving gloves to our students unless it is actually necessary.

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And I am an active industrial research chemist by profession and have two degrees in chemistry, including a PhD. I have worked for years on high end custom organic synthesis, am in the lab every day and have used a huge range of reagents, so I do in fact know what I'm talking about. Whilst it's generally true that relatively speaking the ingredients of developers are not particularly toxic (with exceptions, like pyro), it is better to be safe than sorry, especially in regards to long-term exposure to things used day in day out. In case it wasn't clear my remarks on "any chemical solution" were in the context of mixing and using developing agents, not brewing tea