Garment Selection QA for Buyers & Wearers
Not medical advice. Pre-wear checks are literacy, not allergy testing or device certification.
Executive summary
Before you wear or resell a latex garment, industrial dipped-goods specs offer a borrowed vocabulary — holes, powder, protein, odor, bloom, gauge variation — even though fashion catsuits are not ASTM D3578 gloves. NIOSH separates irritant, delayed chemical, and immediate protein reaction patterns for workplace NRL products.
Use this when buying secondhand sheet goods, inspecting a custom commission, or deciding go/no-go on first wear. See Allergy and Skin Contact for allergy classes — do not treat this as a patch test.
Borrowed QC vocabulary
ASTM D3578 is the product standard for dipped NR examination gloves (holes, powder, protein, tensile). ASTM D5151 detects water-leak holes in medical gloves; smallest hole size is not determined by the method. Fashion sheet/garments sit outside that scope — transfer is analogy only.
Dipped-goods defects include entrapped air → pinholes, webbing, low wet gel, incomplete leach → worse aging/discoloration.
What is a pinhole in dipped film?
A pinhole is a through-thickness void — often from entrapped air during dip or cast. Medical glove lines water-leak test for holes; at garment scale you use light and stretch inspection, not D5151 compliance.
Pre-wear checklist
- Light + stretch for pinholes and thin spots (dipped-film logic — not lab leak testing).
- Powder/talc — medical powdered gloves were banned as unreasonable risk; garment powder can carry NRL allergens in workplace framing. Sniff and look; powder is not a protein assay.
- Odor — handbook reodorants mask curative/putrefaction/microbial odors at 0.25–0.5 phr; root cause preferred. Sniff ≠ protein test.
- Bloom vs crack — map symptoms to Aging, Storage and Care.
- Stop rule — new rash or breathing symptoms → stop wear; see Allergy and Skin Contact. Not medical advice.
21 CFR 801.437 requires NRL caution on medical devices and forbids “hypoallergenic” on those devices. Retail fashion latex typically carries no equivalent labeling.
Deep dives (optional)
Deep dive: Protein assay methods (glove lineage)
ASTM D5712 measures total aqueous extractable protein (µg/dm²) — residual content testing, not wearer diagnosis. ASTM D6499 uses immunological measurement of antigenic protein; not a measure of allergenic proteins. ISO 12243 is the assay method for water-extractable protein in NR medical gloves — not sampling or safety limits. Fashion garments almost never publish these numbers.
Deep dive: Aging symptom inspection taxonomy
Ozone ~1–8 pphm ambient; cracks perpendicular to stress, widespread vs flex (local oriented) vs UV (non-oriented over exposed area). Incomplete leach leaves coagulant salts → greater discoloration under warm air, fumes, or UV. Map sticky tack (scission), hard/brittle (crosslink), chalky bloom (wax/antidegradant), oriented cracks (ozone/flex) to the aging action table; polish does not fix ozone crack morphology.