Safety Gloves Information
Safety gloves are a key component of industrial safety gear. Of all work place injuries, one third of them are hand injuries that could be reduced by an adequate pair of safety gloves. In fact, when an industrial work has safety gloves, hand injuries in the work place are reduced by 60 to 70 percent. However, unlike other types of safety gear, industrial safety gloves didn’t have proper safety ratings until 2000 and workers relied on package descriptions to pick out a protective set of safety gloves. After ANSI and the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) established safety rating for gloves from one (lowest) to five (highest), safety gloves now have a rating to indicate how protective they are and which work environments they are better suited for.
ANSI/ISEA 105-2000 specifies a rating system for safety gloves. This rating system, with gloves numbered one to five, is designed to help workers pick out the best pair of safety gloves, whether the needed gloves are metal or lab safety gloves or gloves for electricians. Other workplace factors like cut, abrasion, and heat resistance are also taken into account in this rating system. A work glove with a rating of one, for example, is better designed for light work, while a glove labeled five should be able to withstand eight pounds of impact. For a typical construction job, safety gloves have an ANSI/ISEA rating of either a two or three.
Prior to 2000, industrial safety gloves were given descriptive ratings like “good,” “fair,” and “poor,” as well as product descriptions, to help workers determine what safety gloves were suited for hand protection at work. However, this system, unlike those set for eye and head protection, meant a Kevlar or leather glove set from one manufacturer could differ from a similar-looking glove set from another, and workers often didn’t know the difference until trying the gloves at their jobs. After February 2000, all gloves need to be tested to see if they comply with OSHA’s regulation 29 CFR 1910.138. The tests that safety gloves now go through include tests for cut resistance, puncture resistance, abrasion resistance, chemical permeation, chemical degradation, hole detection, flame resistance, heat degradation resistance, and conductive cold resistance.
While safety glove protection can vary between different work places, a pair of industrial safety gloves should be able to protect a worker’s hands against cuts, abrasions, pinches, burns, frostbite, and chemical burns. Metal safety gloves, such as gloves made with a stainless steel mesh, and lab safety gloves, as well as rubber-insulated safety gloves for electricians, all differ in make but, regardless of what kind of safety gloves you need for a job, all safety gloves now need to be labeled with a number to indicate their protectiveness and suitability for certain work environments.
