Re: [CH] dehydrator-ing peppers Question
Brent Thompson (brent@hplbct.hpl.hp.com)
Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:41:18 -0700
> if all that capsicum leaks through, why
> as a nurse am I bothering to wear gloves around my clients???
I bet those latex gloves work fine in a medical situation because probably
all biological organisms are larger than the pore sizes of the gloves. And
probably the reason so much capsaicin always leaks through those flimsy
little gloves is that molecules of all the forms of capsaicin are _much_
smaller than any biological organism, and apparently small enough to easily
diffuse through latex gloves.
I've given up on those latex gloves. Within an hour or maybe even half an
hour of working with sufficiently pungent chiles you feel you've just
wasted your money on gloves. The big thick sturdy neoprene gloves seem to
work ok, but maybe because I've only used them for brief periods in
relatively low-concentration situations, like maybe an hour or two peeling
hot (for poblanos) poblanos. The worst glove saturating situation I've
done was de-seeding dried tobasco chiles -- within 30 minutes or so those
little latex glove fingertips are bright red inside and out and apparently
transmitting capsaicin to fingers unimpeded.
--- Brent