Sans-serif math with latex in matplotlib

I always have text.usetex = True in my matplotlibrc file. In addition to that, I use this as well:

mpl.rcParams['text.latex.preamble'] = [
       r'\usepackage{siunitx}',   # i need upright \micro symbols, but you need...
       r'\sisetup{detect-all}',   # ...this to force siunitx to actually use your fonts
       r'\usepackage{helvet}',    # set the normal font here
       r'\usepackage{sansmath}',  # load up the sansmath so that math -> helvet
       r'\sansmath'               # <- tricky! -- gotta actually tell tex to use!
]  

Hope that helps.