Needless to say, beautiful hands as a means of expressing personality mean at least as much as a beautiful face or beautiful hair. Therefore, this guide should deal with rough hands and what you can do about it.
Proper cleaning of hands
Appropriate cleaning of the hands is extremely important. One has to consider that industrialization and the associated mechanization have meant that the hands are often exposed to high levels of stress.
If long-term contact with water is not exactly beneficial to the skin, the risk becomes even greater if chemicals have to be added to it for technical reasons. These can be cleaning agents (soap, washing-up liquid) or also paints, oils, the water can also contain metal salts, as is usual in galvanic workshops for surface finishing of metals, or the skin comes into intensive contact with solvents, during chemical cleaning with clothing , in the paint industry, when degreasing objects, in short, our skin is exposed to environmental conditions that can no longer reasonably be described as natural.
It goes without saying that the cleansing process should not put additional strain on the already heavily stressed skin. In particular, one must avoid removing fat from the skin. In some professions, e.g. In paint shops, it is not always possible to desirably clean the skin with soap and water alone, and nothing is more obvious in such cases than removing the contaminating material with the associated solvent.
Hands & thinners
Anyone who has ever painted or varnished in their own household knows how easy it is to clean their hands with turpentine, white spirit, thinner and the like. However, since the use of solvents to clean the hands often leads to skin diseases, there has been no shortage of voices who want to have completely banned hand cleaning with solvents.
For practical reasons, however, it will not always be possible to avoid the fact that solvents are used to clean the skin in certain cases. Done in the right way is sure not to do much harm. Unfortunately, in companies and factories it is often handled in such a way that a makeshift vessel, such as a large tin can or the like, is placed next to the washing facilities, in which there is a large amount of solvent, and hands are cared for before washing with water and soap Dip your hands in the solvent as if it were water and pre-wash your hands in it.
The solvent will soon be dirty. Since several are usually cleaned in the same vessel and solvents are not germicidal, infectious skin diseases can easily be transmitted in this way. In places where cleaning with solvents cannot be avoided, clean, fresh solvent must be dripped from a small container onto a clean, new cloth and the skin cleaned with this cloth, and only the rough dirt may be removed quickly .
Proper cleaning of hands with thinner
The rags that have been used once must be disposed of in a lockable metal container. Particular attention should be paid to this if the solvents evaporate easily and there is a risk of fire, which is considerable with some solvents.
The particular risk to the skin from solvents is, on the one hand, that some of them can cause eczema. On the other hand, they all remove the fat from the skin, which is essential to keep it healthy. If the hands have been washed with warm water and soap, it is imperative for people who come into contact with solvents that the skin is rubbed with an oily skin cream (a so-called matt cream or day cream usually does not contain any fat and is therefore for them Purpose not suitable).
However, we must not believe that the so-called greasing replaces the skin fat lost from the skin, because there is no cream that is chemically similar in any way to the complex fats of human skin. A skin cream forms a protective layer on the skin that protects the skin oil that is still present from being washed out further.
Of particular importance in recent times are ointments which are supposed to protect the skin from contact with harmful substances during work, in such a way that the skin is covered by a thin film that isolates it like an invisible glove. Of course, you have to use protective ointments and creams of different types, depending on the pollutants.
It is obvious to us that a protective ointment that is effective against fat solvents (turpentine, gasoline, etc.) does not have to be effective against harmful substances in aqueous solution or water itself. In fact, it is also the case that those pharmaceutical companies that are involved in the manufacture of such products have brought out various types of skin protection ointments and give us detailed instructions about which ointment should be used in the event of a certain hazard.
