Natural rubber (NR) gloves manufactured from NR latex are widely utilized in various applications as a personal protective device due to their exceptional barrier characteristics in infection control. However, the use of NR gloves was associated with concerns about an NR protein allergy. With comprehensive leaching procedures now a common practice in NR latex glove factories to eliminate latent rubber proteins and chemical allergens, occurrences and complaints of protein allergy from medical glove users have decreased drastically over the past two decades. The present work aims to eliminate further the residual rubber allergens in NR latex through effective purification of the NR latex and compounding the thus purified latex with an established formulation for allergy-free NR for glove applications. NR latex was purified by deproteinization and saponification, respectively. Several analytical techniques were used to verify rubber allergens eliminated in the purified latexes. Saponified NR (SPNR) latex was the purified NR latex of choice since it is devoid of allergenic proteins and poses the lowest risk of Type I allergy. The purified NR latex was compounded with zinc diethyldithiocarbamate (ZDEC), zinc dibutyldithiocarbamate (ZDBC), and zinc 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (ZMBT), respectively, for glove dipping. Among the investigated accelerators, only ZDBC was not detected in the artificial sweat that came into contact with the dipped articles. Thus, it is deduced that ZDBC poses the lowest risk of Type IV allergy to consumers. Additionally, the morphological and physical properties of dipped articles were assessed. It was revealed that the dipped film from the SPNR latex compounded with ZDBC provided thinner and less yellow products with a more uniform internal structure and a tensile strength comparable to those of commercial NR gloves.

The original version unfortunately contained mistakes. The institution of the author Jitladda Sakdapipanich was wrong.

No abstract

In this research, the researchers study the fabrication of oil absorption, hydrophobic polyurethane (PU) sponge for application in an oil-spill cleanup model. Virgin PU is initially hydrophilic. PU is made hydrophobic by incorporating hydrophobic silica aerogel (SA) into PU 3D porous structure by stirring method and UV-treatment method. UV-irradiation promotes the attachment of SA onto the PU surface. Varying UV irradiation time and concentration of SA is done to attain an optimal attachment of SA on PU. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), contact angle measurements (CA) are used to determine the adhesion of SA on PU. The loadings of SA with and without UV-treatment are compared. Results show that SA-PU with UV-treatment has more loading of SA than SA-PU without treatment. FT-IR spectra and SEM micrographs verify the results. Moreover, the SA-PU is tested for oil absorption to simulate oil-spill cleanup. The findings show fast (less than 3 seconds), recoverable oil-spills cleanup with simple method of preparation. In addition, SA-PU with UV treatment has higher absorption rate and %absorption efficiency when compared to original PU and SA-PU without UV treatment.