Just what is the proper glove?
That's a question that could be answered by anyone from Martha Stewart to your company's welder. But, as anyone in industrial occupations can tell you, the answers are critical.
While gloves have been used for thousands of years for purposes of warmth, cleanliness and even ceremony, the use of special gloves for specific jobs is relatively recent.
In 1889, Johns Hopkins Hospital chief of surgery William Steward Halsted asked the Goodyear Rubber Company to make thin rubber gloves to protect medical staff, specifically his fiance Caroline Hampton, then chief operating room nurse. Hampton had been using a chemical to prepare the operating room for a sterile surgery when she developed a skin reaction. The gloves worked well and by 1894 Halsted ordered the use of sterilized medical gloves at the hospital.
That was a good start and within just a few decades glove technology became important in industrial safety.
Although many new forms of gloves, specific to tasks, have since been developed, OSHA estimates that occupational skin disease still accounts for 10-15 percent of work related diseases.
One of the most important practices of a good tradesman is to ensure work clothes, and especially gloves, are decontaminated before they leave the work site. Welders, for example, might have slag and tiny debris on gloves. If worn home without decontamination, family members could develop skin problems, or eye problems as the bits contaminate the home and clothing.
Some hard lessons have been learned about the proper use of gloves.
Among them, the tragic case of Karen Wetterhahn, a scientist at Dartmouth College who specialized in toxic metal exposure. In August 1996, Wetterhahn was studying the way mercury interacted with protein. She was careful to wear protective glasses, gloves and protective clothing. Yet, nine months later, at the age of 48, she was dead of mercury poisoning. Her illness was traced back to that August when she spilled two drops of mercury on her gloved hand. It was later established that dimethylmercury can penetrate latex in about 15 seconds.
Wearing the right glove for the job, all the time, is one of the most important modern safety precepts. Check with companies such as allsafetyproducts.com for industrial gloves and guidance on the proper choices.