- Safety Merchandise
- Personal Protective Equipment
- Respiratory, Hearing, Eye, Hand and Body protection
I was a foreman at an ink and pigments manufacturing facility and oversaw the shipping/receiving crew and was there for over 30 years. When I started working in shipping we wore rubber gloves and it was mandatory to wear long sleeve shirts all the time even when it was 90+ degrees to protect our hands and arms from pigment residue on the containers that would rub off if/when you touched them. In the mid 1990's a salesman convinced the plant manager to try using Arretil for the whole manufacturing portion of the plant. He touted it would save money on gloves and it would provide workers exceptional skin protection from the pigments and dyes produced in our plant. We were given a notice that we were REQUIRED to use the Arretil for the next 3 months to give a better picture of how well it worked for us we were told that if it proved successful we might even be allowed to wear short sleeve shirts in the summer time. I was well aware of how badly the pigment would dye my skin if I did not have proper protection as I had pigment get inside my gloves before or find my gloves had a hole and my skin would be blue, red, etc for the next week even though I washed with a heavy pumice soap and lacquer thinner. I did not want to participate in this inevitable joke, but I needed to set a good example for my shipping department so I used the cream, but I also used gloves. We had been using the Arretil for about 2 days when I went to close a valve on an empty powder dye tote and while pushing the lever my rubber glove got pinched in the threads of the valve screw. I did not want to hit the lever backwards hard to drive the valve back open and release the glove as it would likely cause pigment dust to stir and get all over me including my face. I pulled my hand out of the glove so I could take the tote to be washed and get the glove out. When I took my hand out I found that when the valve pinched my glove it ripped a hole in the finger and my hand was now covered in a dark yellow dye (almost green). I went to the bathroom to wash off as much of the dye off as I could and to my surprise I washed off all of it! My hand was not tainted at all except under my fingernails (because I had not worked hard to get the cream under my nails in the morning). I became a firm advocate for Arretil and can state for a fact it works great. Our plant continued to use Arretil until we were bought out in 2008 at which time I retired. Arretil cream is excellent and I would highly recommend to anyone working with harsh chemicals that could stain/discolor or irritate your skin.
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