Nick and all, hi,

This will be completely un-useful and un-actionable to anybody, but the way you 
phrased your question is interesting anyway.

When there was a push to develop fuel cells with polymer membranes, to get away 
from platinum-palladium catalysts, one of the problems was that they needed a 
membrane that would be proton-donating (so, functioning as an acid by the 
Bronsted definition).  There was a heavy raft of work for perhaps a decade 
(maybe much longer) on polymer materials that have very acidic side-chains.  I 
don’t know how anything like that behaves if it is out under air, rather than 
in a fluid environment.  But if viruses are not dry, and are hosted in small 
droplets for a time, perhaps that distinction is less relevant.

In any case, considering that the glove industry is probably entirely 
predicated on reducing unit cost, and that I have no idea what the elasticity 
may be of fuel cell membrane polymers, they probably will not be glove material 
anytime soon.  I haven’t even looked at that literature for, what, maybe 15 
years (?).  So I have no idea what the state of development is now.

Eric. 

> On Jun 23, 2020, at 3:38 AM, <[email protected]> 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Any materials experts out there? 
>  
> Ok, so.  We know that most covid transmission is hand to face and we know 
> that the virus is highly vulnerable to acids and some other substances.  Is 
> it not possible to design gloves (and perhaps masks) with those substances 
> embedded?  How about cloth gloves dunked in vinegar and hung out to dry 
> before wearing?  Is vinegar still acid when it’s dry?  
>  
> Yeah.  I know.  Dumb.  But somebody explain to me why. 
>  
> N
>  
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ 
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