When you work in a risky environment, you want to safeguard your skin from hazardous chemicals, agents, and extreme temperatures. Hand protection gloves are indispensable PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for workers in varied industries. While purchasing this protective wearable instrument, you need to consider different factors, with the gloves’ material being a key component. Here’s your guide to the various types of gloves material and their application.
Cotton Gloves
Cotton gloves enable proper blood circulation with their intrinsic breathable character. You can invest in them if you are not handling sharp and pointed objects, liquids, hot surfaces, and other harmful solvents. They are ideal for usage in low-risk environments like gardening, transport of commercial goods, and regular maintenance work. You can also find cotton as an additional layer in other superior-range gloves for added warmth and ventilation. Furthermore, cotton as a material works wonders if you have dry skin or suffer from eczema. After you apply a moisturising lotion, the cotton glove will help the skin retain moisture and reduce itching.
Leather Gloves
Leather gloves are tailor-made for working with metals, whether welding, cutting or polishing. They offer enhanced grip and protect the skin from developing scratches as you deal with needle-like pointed tools. Moreover, this material derived from animals offer resistance to sparks that can otherwise burn the skin to cause irreversible damage. However, the leather may shrink in the long run, especially due to exposure to excessive heat. Therefore, you need to factor in this downside before buying leather gloves.
Pro-tip: Purchase a leather glove with a liner so that your skin does not wear out due to moisture loss.
Fabric Coated Gloves
These are regular cotton gloves with a protective sheath of latex, nitrile, or PU (polyurethane), which increases the utility of the original material. It allows you to handle moderate chemicals in small-scale industries or chemistry laboratories in schools and colleges. You can protect yourself from cuts and abrasions, but they are no direct substitutes for a dedicated pair of heavy-use gloves. Furthermore, their usability takes a dip when employed in biting cold regions. Thus, you cannot use them in areas where winters take an aggressive turn or while working in cold storage.
Latex Gloves
Latex or natural rubber gloves come with increased elasticity and durability and are used widely in the healthcare industry. Besides hospitals and child care centres, you can also find them in food processing industries and chemical factories. They grant the highest protection against chemicals, such as diluted acid (sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid) and alkaline solutions (hydroxides of potassium, calcium, ammonium and others). You can sport these gloves to grip both dry and wet surfaces and work with acute precision. However, they do not make you immune to scratches and cuts.
Nitrile Gloves
Nitrile, a type of synthetic rubber, is an excellent alternative to latex, especially for people with sensitive skin. Latex can cause allergies and other skin diseases when worn extensively. Nitrile does not create such issues and offers enhanced resistance against solvents and corrosive chemicals.
Neoprene
Neoprene is another variety of synthetic rubber that protects from burns with its high insulation characteristic. Furthermore, neoprene-made gloves are more resistant to chemicals than their natural and organic counterpart, latex.
Aluminised Gloves
In the presence of burning hot furnaces, aluminised gloves become the best bet. They do not melt even when the temperature scale tips a new high, with some offering resistance up to 1000℃.
Therefore, before purchasing hand protection gloves, you must be enlightened about their material to choose appropriately. Otherwise, the very purpose of donning gloves suffers a setback, and you become prone to injuries and accidents.
