Hand cleaner for oil and gas workers

01 · The work

Crude in every crease

Floorhands, roustabouts, pumpers and well techs work in it all day: crude, grease, tar and drilling mud on the hands, and long hitches in open country under hard sun. On a remote pad, the nearest sink can be the doghouse or miles down the lease road.

Wet ground and brush at remote sites bring mosquitoes, ticks and poison ivy too, and you can’t drive two hours to town over a rash.

UV rays can get through clouds and even glass, so overcast days and the truck cab still count.R&R Lotion, Skin Cancer white paper (2024), Importance of Sunscreen and Types of UV Radiation

02 · The barrier

The cleaner takes your skin with it

• Crude and grease
• Solvent cleaner
• Skin cells
• Oils and lipids

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is made of dead skin cells held together by natural oils and lipids. Picture bricks and mortar. The mortar holds moisture in and keeps irritants out.

Crude, tar and grease work deep into the creases and around the nails. Harsh solvent cleaners dissolve oil, and they don’t stop at the crude. They strip the skin’s own oils too. Do that every tour and the mortar wears thin.

Sources: R&R Lotion blog, Protecting Your Skin with Barrier Creams (2023); R&R Lotion Oil & Gas industry page.

03 · What develops

Dry, cracked, then dermatitis

• Water escaping
• Irritants

Keep exposing skin to harsh substances and the barrier breaks down. That’s irritant contact dermatitis. It starts as redness, itching and dryness, and it can progress to cracking and blistering.

Cracked hands sting, slow you down on the floor, and are harder to get clean on the next wash-up, so the cycle feeds itself.

There’s a second type, allergic contact dermatitis, where skin becomes sensitized to something it touches. If your hands won’t settle down, get them looked at.

On the job, contact dermatitis shows up on the hands in about 80% of cases.Occupational contact dermatitis, as reported on the R&R Lotion blog (2023)

04 · Why we built it

Built for the rig floor

Oilfield hands need a cleaner strong enough for crude and tar, a way to clean up when there’s no water on the pad, and something for hands that are chapped from all of it. Plus a sunscreen that holds up through a hot hitch.

Hand sanitizer doesn’t work well on hands that are visibly dirty or greasy. Greasy hands need the grease lifted off first.CDC, When and How to Wash Your Hands

05 · On the hitch

When to use what

1. 1
   At the tailgateSunscreen 15 minutes before you’re in the sun, applied liberally to the neck, ears, face, forearms and the backs of your hands.
2. 2
   Every 2 hoursReapply sunscreen at least every 2 hours, after 80 minutes of sweating, and right after you towel off.
3. 3
   No sink on the padBefore you eat: waterless hand cleaner. Apply, scrub, towel off.
4. 4
   End of the tourHeavy Duty Hand Cleaner at the doghouse sink, rinse, then Advanced Repair Hand Cream on dry, chapped hands.

Follow each product’s label directions and your HSE program. Working wet or brushy pads? Add I.C. Insect Repellent Lotion (EPA-registered IR3535, repels mosquitoes and ticks for up to 8 hours) and I.C. Ivy Block (a bentonite clay barrier you put on before the brush).