For every exposure with chemicals, safety gloves should be worn. Dependant on the chemical properties of the used substance, the appropriate glove must be chosen. Therefore, most vendors of safety gloves provide tables with permeability times for certain substances. Furthermore the gloves are classified in scale numbers/permeation levels from 1 to 6. These are fixed in DIN EN 374.
Example: a nitrile glove (thickness ~ 0.14 mm) is suitable for working with phosphoric acid (permeation level 6, breakthrough time > 480 min) but only provides limited protection for ethanol (permeation level 1, breakthrough time 20 min) and no protection for methanol (permeation level 0, breakthrough time 7 min). The appropriate glove for your application should at least provide protection at permeation level 2 (breakthrough time > 30 min).
