Quote:
Originally posted by novice
GlassJaw, how can you tell those are NCEG gloves ? They look exactly the same as the ones the nice lady at LAX was wearing.
|
First, from the way they are all dressed, (in full "bunny suits"), the cleanroom they are in would require no less than a Glove rated for Critical Environments, or else the contamination engineer would be looking for new employment. Each lot of the gloves we maufactured for this type of environment were tested for quality assurance for particulate and ionic extractable contamination. One of our OEM Customers had a MAXIMUM Specification for allowable particles which was 1500. That is a Total of 1500 particles per sq-cm of glove area greater than 0.5 microns in size. For reference (following a quick search of google) a single crystal of Table Salt is about 100 Microns in diameter, a human hair is about 50-70 microns, and a bacteria is about 2-3 microns. VERY stringent. I have been suited up in similar garb to the group in the picture, just to go into and observe a Class 10 Cleanroom in action. (That would be Rated at less than or equal to 10 particles greater than 0.5 microns in size per cubic foot of airspace.)
The white color of the gloves leads me to believe that they are nitrile material. I would have to get my hands on one to tell you 100%, but I am confident in my statement. Could be Natural Rubber (normally yellow-ish) with Titanium Dioxide as a coloring agent, but most likely not. There are a number of levels of quality that gloves can be made to fulfill. Most likely the LAX-Lady was using a White Glove, which could be either a lower quality nitrile glove, or the aforementioned natural rubber glove with colorant. Remember your MarketDroidSpeak: Perception is Reality, ergo "White" is "Clean (aka Not Dirty)".
Either way, I would bet that they were a lower quality (read Commodity Product) glove than those used in the picture above. By way of example, the Gloves we manufactured for the CE Industry sold for between $97.00 and $175.00 per case of 1000 gloves. If you need gloves from Costco for checking the luggage at LAX, look for a price range of about $20 per 1000. Huge difference in price, and MEGA difference in quality of product.