When faced with an intimidating array of safety gloves, it can be difficult to know where to start when you come to choosing hand protection for a particular task. To help you with this, we thought we would sketch a process break down that will (hopefully!) simplify the process somewhat. The following steps are not fundamental, but they will provide a useful outline to guide you.
1. Determine the level of cut risk there will be surrounding the task you are about to undertake. That way, you will be able to narrow down your choices to just one colour group of gloves.
Traffi gloves are colour coded, red, amber and green, and each colour is associated with a cut level. The aim of this system is to make it easier for you. If, for example, you are working with sharp tools that pose a higher risk to a potential hand injury, you at once know that the most relevant glove for your task will be a green one.
2. Determine how much risk abrasion, tear and puncture will pose to you.
The back of each glove, or the label inside displays a series of index values. This is the EN388:2016 standard and it describes how a glove’s performance against a set of requirements is measured. For example, if you were to be working in construction, or more specifically, bricklaying, you would want to make sure the glove you choose has a high level of abrasion resistance.
3. Select the conditions you will be working in, dry, wet, heat, oily, cold or chemical. Conditions can be a combination of these.
For example, if conditions are wet, you may want to consider a waterproof glove. With Traffi products, each product page displays 6 logos on the specifications tab, and all the conditions that apply to that product are highlighted, making it easy for you to see whether the glove will be suited to the conditions that you are looking for.
4. Decide how much grip is needed.
When deciding this, you essentially need to consider the tactility and/or thickness of the glove too, as grip refers to the ability to apply pressure, and a glove with low tactility is going to be detrimental to grip. Tactility must also consider a variety of reasons. For one, the gauge of the glove liner is a key contributor to the tactility of a glove, as is the type of coating and the quality of the engineered yarn.
5. Know the duration of time that you are going to be wearing the gloves.
For extended periods of time, a higher comfort level may be needed. As well as the gauge of the glove, the quality of the yarn engineering and composition ultimately dictates the comfort and durability. Research has shown that a lack of comfort is a key reasoning behind employees opting to remove safety gloves and expose themselves to higher risk in the workplace. Worker comfort is key to a successful safety glove rollout.
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