Skin is not a surface
The thing that dissolves a contaminant off an object dissolves the barrier that keeps your skin working. Same chemistry, entirely different consequence.
Precautions
- Wear gloves
- Consider professional help
In detail
CleaningHQ is about cleaning objects, and this record exists because the two questions collide constantly: a person with engine oil, paint or adhesive on their hands reaches for whatever removed it from the garage floor. The reason that is a mistake is specific rather than squeamish. The outer layer of skin works because of a lipid matrix between its cells — an oily barrier that holds water in and keeps other things out. Every substance that dissolves oils dissolves that barrier too, and it does not distinguish. White spirit, acetone, petrol, thinners and strong alkaline degreasers all strip it, and the result is not a burn that announces itself but dryness, cracking, and a barrier that admits the next thing more readily. The regulator's sheets say so directly: acetone causes skin irritation, and prolonged or repeated exposure causes drying and cracking with redness. Several are also absorbed THROUGH the skin — oxalic acid, acetone and cresols are all recorded as passing through it. Purpose-made hand cleansers use mild surfactants and abrasives rather than solvents. CleaningHQ gives no medical advice; where a substance has reached skin, the label and the poisons service govern.
Why
- Hand cleanser is explained by Skin is not a surface
- Acetone is explained by Skin is not a surface
- White spirit is explained by Skin is not a surface
Sources for this page
Sources
Right to Know Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Acetone (RTK 0006)
New Jersey Department of Health, 2015 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That acetone can be absorbed through the skin, causes skin irritation, and that prolonged or repeated exposure causes drying and cracking of the skin with redness. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The 'Description and Use' paragraph and the 'Handling and Storage' reactivity list. Supports the claim as stated. Establishes acetone as a catalogue agent on a regulator's identity and reactivity rather than on general chemistry, and supplies the plastics warning that governs every domestic use of nail polish remover on a surface.
Right to Know Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Oxalic Acid (RTK 1445)
New Jersey Department of Health, 2010 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That oxalic acid can affect a person by passing through the skin and that prolonged or repeated contact causes rash, blisters and slow-healing ulcers. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The 'Description and Use' paragraph and the 'Handling and Storage' reactivity list. Supports the claim as stated. Gives the rust-remover chemistry an agent record and a regulator behind it, and supplies two material warnings — steel and silver — that place the substance a long way from the general-purpose treatment its supermarket packaging implies.
Right to Know Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Stoddard Solvent (RTK 1736)
New Jersey Department of Health, 2008 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That white spirit is a solvent used for degreasing and attacks coatings. (background and mechanism only)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The 'Description and Use' paragraph and the 'Handling and Storage' reactivity list. Supports the claim as stated. Gives the solvent branch of the stain records a named agent with a regulator behind it, and resolves the British/American naming collision that had kept 'white spirit' out of the catalogue.
Last reviewed by a person on .