When choosing safety gloves, choosing the right kind of gloves is crucial. Beyond this, finding the perfect fit, function, and level of protection is also essential. When safety gloves are too loose, it can be challenging to manage delicate tasks. At the same time, too-tight gloves will also restrict functionality.
Whether your employees need safety gloves for construction work, factory jobs, mechanical tasks, or any other hazardous industry, using the correct type of protective hand gloves is vital. Otherwise, your employees will be at a higher risk of injury. Suitable PPE is crucial in reducing workplace injuries. You won’t want to drain medical insurance and workers comp insurance plans for the company.
Let’s have a look at the different kinds of modern work gloves and which environments they are suited to.
Fabric and Cotton Gloves
Fabric and cotton gloves, known as liners, offer a thin layer of breathable protection. These gloves provide minimal protection from open flames, sharp objects, and puncture wounds. Moreover, they provide sufficient protection to prevent abrasions and other hand injuries effectively. Lastly, these safety gloves also ensure that workers’ hands are kept clean.
More often than not, fabric and cotton gloves are worn as a base layer of protection, and a larger safety glove is explicitly worn for workers in colder climates. With this, some manufacturers include a coating layer to improve grip and enhance protection.
Coated Fabric Gloves
Coated disposable gloves are considered general-purpose safety gloves. These gloves provide high protection against punctures and cuts with boosted protection from the alkalinity of certain items like bricks. Moreover, they are also chemical resistant. Coated gloves are made with latex, nitrile, polyurethane, or PVC coatings.
Rubber and Synthetic Gloves
Rubber, plastic, and synthetic safety gloves are typically worn by medical professionals and those who work in laboratories. These gloves provide protection against biohazards, chemicals, oils, grease, and solvents.
A perfect fit is essential when choosing rubber, plastic, or synthetic protective gloves. The right fit gives the wearer more dexterity to perform delicate work. However, these gloves don’t provide sufficient protection against sharp objects and abrasive surfaces.
Leather Safety Gloves
Leather provides excellent grip protection from sharp objects, abrasive surfaces, and even hot surfaces. Leather can sustain moderate levels of heat, so these safety gloves are perfect for welding and various other tasks.
Leather gloves offer durability, high function, and a comfortable fit. Even so, these gloves can shrivel and harden when exposed to high heat levels and should be paired with liners.
Aluminized Protective Gloves
Aluminized safety gloves offer exceptional heat resistance, making them suitable for welding tasks, furnace and foundry work, and various laboratory processes that use high-heat ovens.
These safety gloves are manufactured with reflective and insulating properties, which offer ample heat protection of up to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
Kevlar Gloves
Kevlar gloves are an excellent choice for lightweight, durable hand protection. This innovative fabric offers high protection against cuts and abrasions. These gloves can also be used as a protective lining to support various other styles of safety gloves.
Kevlar gloves are suitable for various construction industry jobs, fishing, etc. Because Kevlar fabric is cheaper than leather and provides as much protection, it’s an excellent option for various tasks. However, Kevlar does not offer as much protection from heat as the fabric is synthetic and can melt in high heat temperatures. Even so, Kevlar gloves are still an excellent choice for increased protection from sharp objects and puncture wounds.
Chemical and Liquid Resistant Gloves
When choosing chemical or liquid-resistant safety gloves, it’s important to consider hygiene and the absorption of harmful chemicals through the skin that can cause long-term and immediate health complications.
Chemical and liquid-resistant hand gloves include butyl rubber gloves, natural latex gloves, rubber gloves, neoprene gloves, and nitrile rubber gloves. This category of safety gloves provides protection from petroleum oils, greases, acids, solvents, gasoline, alcohol, hydraulic fluids, peroxides, fuels, nitric acid, alkalis, and much more.
Puncture-Proof Safety Gloves
Puncture-proof safety gloves are sometimes crafted from Kevlar fabric, which is manufactured with a scale-like structure for maximum protection and durability. The design can effectively deflect penetration from sharp objects and even needles. As a result, this fabric technology is also used for protective motorcycle gear and even bullet-proof vests.
Now that you know and understand the functions of the different types of modern safety gloves, you can determine which safety gloves are most suitable for the task at hand. Sometimes, you will need to invest in more than one type of safety gloves, specifically when liners are beneficial. Moreover, remember to find the perfect fit to ensure maximum agility for fine work and ideal comfort.
Fraquoh and Franchomme
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