The American food industry alone uses around 30 billion disposable gloves every year. As this is not the only section of the world to use these, it stands to reason that hundreds of billions end up in use every year. So, what makes disposable gloves such an important part of life, and what industries use them so much to get through quite so many?
This article will discuss the different places in American life where you can expect to find people using the most disposable gloves. As you read through, you will also learn about the different kinds of gloves and why each one is necessary for their user’s safety.
Food Preparation
One of the most common places where you will see disposable gloves in regular use is in food preparation. By wearing these, you prevent the spread of any pathogens from your bare hands into the food and from there to the customer. You can also stop any part of the hand, such as hair or errant skin flakes, from touching the food and contaminating it.
Many of these gloves are latex, as, throughout history, that has been the most common type of glove used. As such, it is often the easiest-to-find option for many people. More recently, though, other glove options have come to the forefront.
Vinyl gloves are often used these days due to the possible allergic reaction caused to the wearer when they prepare food. Also, while less likely, food can become contaminated with latex when prepared with gloves made from that material. As such, latex has become less popular over time.
Buying vinyl gloves is also among the cheaper options. This makes them very popular as food preparation can demand many changes in gloves. These might be for reasons including:
- Switching from preparation to handling prepared food
- Touching raw eggs, meats, or seafood and then moving elsewhere
- Handling spicy food before other activities
This list is only a few examples of why food preparation gloves have a high turnover. This makes them very popular in the industry.
Healthcare
The healthcare industry is another area that uses a lot of disposable gloves. The reasons are much like those of the food preparation industry in that you do not want contamination between surfaces. Although, as you can imagine, the possibility of the transfer of pathogens is much higher in a medical environment.
Of course, health-based interactions often demand the direct touching of patients. Because of this, one cannot use latex gloves due to common allergic reactions.
In healthcare, you will also need to change the gloves that you use on a very regular basis. As this is the case, nitrile gloves are popular in this industry. As an extra benefit, this type of glove also allows the worker to keep a light level of touch sensitivity.
The larger difference in the gloves comes from the quality assurance that you have with them. In the healthcare industry, any gloves that you use must be FDA-approved. This has the benefit of ensuring that they follow federal regulations and that you are buying from a tested source.
On top of this, if you are dealing with chemotherapy drugs, then the ones that you use here have a whole set of extra requirements. This is due to the permeability of nitrile gloves as well as other issues.
Manufacturing Chemicals
When looking at the manufacturing industry, you can expect to need to handle many corrosive chemicals. Because of this, ensuring that your employees have protective gloves is vital. It can be the difference between safety and a class action lawsuit from your employees.
There are a few things that you should think about when determining which kind of gloves that you should invest in. These include:
- how permeable they are to specific chemicals
- whether the material will react with the chemicals that you work with
Lucky for you, there are already plenty of resources available to help you work out if a specific chemical will react with any gloves that you choose. If you are in the manufacturing industry, this should be part of any safety brief with your employees.
Electronics Production
Nitrile gloves are a very common sight in the electronics industry. When dealing with delicate tasks, such as the production of circuits, they can protect the devices from the worker’s hands. This is not to say that the worker is unclean, but that the natural oils in the hand can hurt how well a device performs.
As an extra benefit, people praise nitrile gloves for their high level of sensitivity. This can be very useful if feeling for deformations in a piece of equipment. Or, you can have a little extra dexterity when attempting to place a small item into place on a circuit.
On top of this, such gloves do not carry a static charge. This means that they do not create any electrical field through normal use. Thus, you can have the assurance that you will not damage any components during the manufacturing process.
Such lack of static also prevents the buildup of dust on the gloves, which can also have a negative effect.
Childcare
For similar reasons to healthcare, childcare bodies often use disposable gloves. Small children are notorious for spreading pathogens, especially through bodily fluids. Changing diapers can also be a time when you want to generally keep the childcarer clean for everybody’s sake.
For all these reasons, gloves are a commonplace sight, and you can expect the childcarer to change them often to maintain this safety.
Learn More About Disposable Gloves
With that, you should have a better idea of how much disposable gloves have become a staple in American life. They are essential in a variety of ways, and we would be in danger without them. If you need them for your company, make sure that you have a high-quality supplier.
Lucky for you, we can ensure that you always have the right tools to protect your workers and anyone they might work with. Talk to our specialists, and they can run you through your options. So, give us a call today and see what we can do for you.
