Gardening and Your Health: Protecting Your Hands
 To prevent dry skin, the best protection is a dry fabric barrier between the skin and soil. In other words, wear appropriate gloves and shoes. Pick gloves appropriate for different garden chores. Cotton jersey is good for all around work, while thick leather gloves are good for wet work or work around plants with thorns or spines. For really wet work, including handling chemicals, wear rubber or plastic gloves with cotton liners.
When cotton gloves get wet, change them immediately. When handling chemicals make sure that none gets inside your rubber gloves. Wet chemicals have a more toxic effect on the skin if trapped inside gloves, and the risk of an irritant or allergic reaction to the chemicals increases.
When gardening requires a fine touch despite the cold, cut the ends out of gloves on the first three fingers of the dominant hand (Figure 1). In very cold weather, mittens are better than gloves; fingers stay warmer if they are not separated from each other by fabric. Leather mittens are probably the best insulator against cold and wind.
Dry skin needs moisturization. The best moisturizer is water, but adding water alone to dry skin aggravates the condition through chapping, where skin splits and becomes rough and sore.
A barrier of natural oils, like the waxy cuticle on a leaf, prevents water from the skin being quickly lost into the air. Remember that air circulation around wet skin increases evaporation and chapping.
Evaporation is slowed by frequently applying petrolatum, glycerin, or lanolin-based skin care products. Natural hand soaps and lotions can help treat chapped and dried hands.
An easy way to keep fingers and skin soft and supple is to soak hands in tepid water at bedtime, apply petroleum jelly thickly, then don gloves for overnight moisturization.
Fertilizers are salts and pull moisture out of skin. Wear gloves and wash hands immediately if fertilizers contact skin.
|
