A 2009 study by W. L. Gore & Associates provides evidence that after normal wash and air-dry decontamination procedures, leather boot materials actually retain substantially lower amounts of contaminants at the matrix level than rubber boot materials.
Both leather and rubber are clean of contaminants at the surface level after thorough washing and drying.
This means that while the chemicals were equally removed from the material's surface, Rubber actually allowed the contaminants to penetrate deeper, and the chemicals remained inside the rubber itself after cleaning, while leather allowed significantly less.
Please refer to this page for guidelines on decontaminating your HAIX footwear.