HOW LATEX GLOVES ARE MADE
January 4th, 2010Hexarmor Gloves
January 4th, 2010Hexarmor Sleeves
January 4th, 2010Dyneema Gloves
January 4th, 2010Kevlar Glove Test
January 4th, 2010OSHA STANDARDS FOR PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT
January 3rd, 2010The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) issued a final rule regarding Employer Payment for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) products. This rule affects the CONSTRUCTION industry, general industry, shipyards, and longshoring/marine terminal workplaces. The rule is being enforced as of May 15, 2008.
What’s different?
The rule expands on many existing OSHA standards and is intended to clarify and provide employers with control over the issuance and use of PPE, including work gloves for hazards such as lacerations, abrasions and chemicals. The updated rule establishes a uniform requirement that employers pay for all types of PPE; required under OSHA standards and provides clarity as to the proper levels of PPE that should be implemented. The rule will also allow OSHA to more properly enforce these guidelines in the work environment.
Why employer payment for PPE?
The ruling cites two main justifications for requiring employers to pay for PPE. First, OSHA concluded that the OSHA Act requires employers to pay for PPE that is necessary for employees to perform their jobs safely. Second, OSHA concluded that the proposed rule would enhance compliance with existing PPE requirements in several practical ways, thereby significantly reducing the risk of non-use or misuse of PPE (64 FR 15406-07).
When employees are required to pay for their own PPE, many are likely to avoid PPE costs and thus fail to provide themselves with adequate protection. OSHA also believes that employees will be more inclined to use PPE if it is provided to them at no cost.
When employers take full responsibility for providing PPE to their employees and paying for it, they are more likely to make sure that the PPE is correct for the job, that it is in good condition, and that the employee is protected.
When does the rule go into effect?
The final rule went into effect May 15, 2008. OSHA has acknowledged that many collective bargaining agreements specifying how certain PPE will be paid for by either the employer or employees. Delaying the effective date for 6 months, OSHA has allowed employers and employees time to renegotiate agreements to conform to the new rule. As of May 15, 2008 OSHA began citing employers not adhering to the new ruling resulting in fines up to $7,000 per violation.
What PPE is included?
Employers must pay for PPE required by OSHA standards or by the employer’s worksite hazard. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- Work gloves, when required for hazards such as lacerations, abrasions and chemicals
- Hard hats
- Welding helmets/shields and welding leathers
- Metatarsal guards
- Specialty footwear, such as steel-toe rubber boots or shoes with non-slip soles
- Specialty prescription eyewear, such as special-use prescription glasses that allow employees to wear respirators
- Respirators required to comply with OSHA standards
- Hearing protection
It is important to note that some specific OSHA PPE standards already require employers to pay for 95 percent of PPE. With the new rule being enforced, employers will pay for all PPE with fewer exceptions. 13 of the 26 states with state-run OSHA plans already require payment for most PPE and three states (California, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico) require payment for all PPE. States with state OSHA plans will be required to revise their plans by May 15, 2008 if they do not meet or exceed the new Federal requirements.
GLOVE DANCE
December 7th, 2009 GLOVE TERMINOLOGY
September 21st, 2009
Glovemaking is an old art and has some terms that may be unfamiliar to even the most ardent glove enthusiast.
Airprene: Similar to Neoprene, this material combines breathability and cool comfort with wrist support, flexibility and impact protection to knuckles.
Buckskin
Buckskin: Leather from deer and elk skin is used for shoes, gloves and clothing. Only the outer cut of the skin from which the surface grain has been removed may be correctly defined as “genuine buckskin”. Leather finished from the split or under cut of deerskin must be described as “split buckskin”.
Buffalo
Buffalo: Buffalo leather is made from the hides of domesticated water buffalo of the Far East, not the American bison.
Calfskin
Calfskin: Leather from young cows. Calf leather is finer grained, lighter in weight and more supple than cowhide.
Camel Skin: Leather from camels has a high wear resistance and is soft.
Clarino
Clarino: The highest quality synthetic leather in the world. Clarino fibers are thousands of times finer than silk, making it extremely tough – yet supple, dexterous, lightweight, breathable and comfortable to wear all day long. Unlike typical leather, Clarino Amara is breathable and washable, and will not shrink, stretch or harden. Clarino repells wind, water, stains and mildew, and can be machine washed.
Clute Cuff
Clute Cut: A glove style with a one piece palm and no seam at the base of the finger. There are seams along the fingers on the inside. Its design is a flexible and good for cotton, synthetic and economical, lightweight leather gloves. Clute Cut is not recommended for heavy gloves.
Color Coding: The glove trade color codes are:
Yellow Extra Small 7
Red Small 8
Green Medium 9
Brown Large 10
Blue Extra Large 11
Black XXL 12
Corrected Grain: Corrected grain is grain leather that has had an abrasive used on the finish for more uniform appearance. (to hide scratches etc.). Also used to give a soft feeling on grain, then called buffed, snuffed or fluffed.
Double Wovn Cotton
Cotton: Cotton gloves are made from a natural fiber at an economical price. Cotton is soft, breathable, absorbent, lightweight and durabile. Cotton gloves are used for basic abrasion protection.
Cowhide
Cowhide: Leather from full-grown cows. Cowhide is the most popular leather because of its availability. It strikes a good balance of durability, dexterity, abrasion resistance, and comfort. It can have a smooth or rough finish.
Cuff: The cuff is the material extending beyond the palm of the hand to give extra protection to the wrist and forearm. See Knit Wrist, Safety Cuff, Gauntlet.
Deerskin
Deerskin: Deerskin has high flexibility and is soft, but strong. It is regarded as the best leather for gloves.
Dyneema: Dyneema® is the world’s strongest fiber. It offers maximum strength combined with minimum weight. It is up to 15 times stronger than quality steel and up to 40% stronger than other man-made fibers. Dyneema® is extremely durable and is resistant to moisture and chemicals. It provides the best cut protection.
Elkskin
Elk: Elkskin is supple yet tough. It dries soft.
Fiber: A fiber is the smallest visible piece of tanned skin (smallest visible by the eye). The skin is no more than thousands fibers, three dimensional, woven together, in the grain almost vertical (80%-85%), in the lowest part of the skin almost horizontal (30%). The degrees of the fiber play a very important role in the wear and tear resistance.
Flock Lined Nitrile
Flock Lined: A glove lined with fine cotton fibers for moisture absorption and easy donning.
Full Grain
Full Grain: Full grain leather has the original grain surface of the skin. It is the finest raw material for gloves as the clean natural hides have not been sanded to remove imperfections. Only the hair has been removed. The grain remains in its natural state which allows the best fiber strength, resulting in greater durability. The natural grain also has natural breathability, resulting in greater comfort. The natural Full-Grain surface will wear better than other leather. Rather than wearing out, it will develop a natural rich texture and grow more beautiful over time. The finest gloves, furniture and footwear are made from Full Grain leather.
Gauntlet
Gauntlet: A very long cuff to protect the forearm.
Gemsbok
Gemsbok: From the deer family. Economical and soft.
Goatskin
Goatskin: Goatskin is more hard wearing than other leathers and is both durable and supple because of the natural lanolin produced by goats. Mostly available in thin cuts, it gives a pleasing tactile finish with an interesting grain. This leather is highly recommended for applications requiring tactile sensitivity with light to medium protective needs
Grain
Grain: The outer, smooth surface of the hide. provides a superior wear resistance compared to split leather. (Grain is also known as Epidermis).
Gunn Cut
Gunn Cut: This durable design provides better wear and comfort, especially for heavier gloves. This is the standard construction for leather gloves, featuring the benefits of a single piece seamless back and the finer seams set further away from the working area of the palm. It is also characterized by the two middle fingers sewn separately onto the palm piece.
Gusset
Gusset: The piece of leather sewn between the fingers, very often used in dress gloves. Also called side wall or fourchette.
Heatlok: Heatlok is a blend of hollow and micro fibers that create a very effective, yet economical insulating material.
Hem
Hem: The edge of the cuff finished with a textile, plasticized material or leather.
Impregnated Vinyl
Impregnated: The plastic (PVC) does not merely coat the material, but actually penetrates the textile. Used where improved grip and dexterity, or low level cut protection is required.
Interlock Lining
Interlock Lining: The inner glove is made of lightweight cotton interlock knit fabric.
Jersey Lined
Jersey Lined: The glove is lined with brushed cotton fabric.
Kevlar: Kevlar® is 5 times stronger than steel, yet, at the same time, is lightweight, flexible and comfortable. Its resistance to chemicals, heat, flames, cuts and breaking makes it one of the best protective materials for gloves.
Keystone Thumb
Keystone Thumb: This classic ergonomic design of the thumb results in superior movement and comfort. Found mostly on driver’s gloves
Knit Wrist
Knit Wrist: A knit wrist is a stretch knitted material, mostly from cotton, to protect the wrist. Also excellent protection against particles falling into the glove. Length is usually 2 – 2.5 inch.
Latex Coated
Latex: Latex is a natural rubber product that offers barrier protection to guard against contaminants and chemicals. Because it stretches, it is comfortable. Synthetic materials are frequently stiffer than latex, and less comfortable to wear. Latex gloves are usually less expensive than synthetic rubber glovesthat provides chemical resistance, economical price.
Leather Gloves
Leather: Excellent protection for abrasion and cuts, breathable and comfort at an economical price.
Lock Stitch
Lock Stitch: The lockstitch is the mechanical stitch most commonly made by sewing machines. Lockstitch is so named because the two threads, upper and lower, “lock” together in the hole in the fabric through which they pass. Unlike chain stitch, lockstitch does not unravel easily and is usually used on higher quality garments.
Neoprene
Neoprene: A synthetic rubber with a high chemical and heat resistance. Famous for its use in wetsuits, Neoprene has proven its superiority for decades with support, flexibility, warmth and impact protection in water sports and medical applications.
Nitrile
Nitrile: Nitrile gloves are manufactured using synthetic latex, contain no latex proteins, and are three times more puncture resistant than natural rubber. They offer superior resistance to punctures and abrasions and are also used for protection against a variety of chemicals. Nitrile material also has a naturally low coefficient of friction, making them easy to don (put on).
Nylon
Nylon: Nylon is a synthetic fiber which is lightweight, exceptionally strong, resilient and abrasion resistant. It is easy to wash, fast drying and resists shrinkage, wrinkling and damage from oil and many chemicals.
Gunn Cut Pattern
Pattern: The design of the glove. Most common patterns are Gunn cut and Clute cut.
Pigskin
Pigskin: Pigskin is known for resilience, holding up well against abrasion, staying pliable with wear, and better withstanding stiffening after exposure to moisture. Pigskin offers the greatest breathability due to the porous texture of this hide. Pigskin is economical and becomes softer with use.
Polypropylene
Polypropylene: Polypropylene is an economical tough, heat-resistant, material that offers high tensile strength (tear resistance). Polypropylene possesses excellent resistance to organic solvents, degreasing agents, acids and alkalies. It is light in weight, non-toxic, resistant to staining, retains flex and has a low moisture absorption rate.
Polyurethane Gloves
Polyurethane (Poly): A synthetic material with high abrasion resistance. It is chemical resistant and very flexible. Polyurethane offers the elasticity of rubber combined with the toughness and durability of metal. Urethanes have better abrasion and tear resistance than rubbers, while offering more strength. Polyurethane offers excellent wear properties, flexibility and elastic memory. It is resistant to oils, solvents, fats, greases and gasoline. Polyurethane will remain flexible down to -90°F and in hot water up to 175°F.
Powdered: A glove that is dusted with corn starch for moisture absorption and easy donning.
Puncture Resistant Gloves
Puncture Resistant: Due to their inherent construction, conventional materials such as cotton, leather, aramids, and nylons are unable to stop sharp objects from penetrating through the material. Puncture resistant products provide superior puncture protection utilizing a variety of different technology.
PVC Gloves
PVC (Polyvinyl chloride, known as Vinyl): PVC protects against a broad range of low hazard chemicals.PVC has high strength, good weather resistance and retains its shape. It is non-toxic and has good electrical insulating properties.
Rawhide: Rawhide is cattle hide that has been de-haired, treated with lime, oil or grease but has not been tanned.
Safety Cuff
Safety Cuff: A cuff with a slit opening on the side enabling the wearer to throw the glove off.
Shoulder Split Gloves
Shoulder Split: This comes from the shoulder area where the hide is less uniform in density and appearance. The result is a less durable, but more affordable leather.
Side Split: This comes from the back and side portions of the animal. The hide is densest here, yielding a consistently durable grade leather.
Split Cowhide
Split: When a thick piece of leather is split into two thinner pieces, the top piece will have grain (Top Grain) and the bottom piece will be suede on both sides. The bottom piece is the split.
Tanning: The process whereby the skin or hide of animals is treated to prevent decay and to impart flexibility and toughness.
Tensile Strength (Tear Resistance): In leather, tensile strength is important. You may have a beautiful looking piece of leather but it may not have any tear resistance. Leather has its tear resistance in the split portion of the hide due to the three dimensional woven interlocking fibers. Also very important in the tear resistance is the flesh side (bottom of skin where the leather meets the meat). Other factors also play an important role such as how well tanned the leather is (not too loose), type of animal, part of hide (belly, shoulder, side), etc. Grain leather has a bad tear resistance due to the vertical fiber structure.
Terry Cloth
Terry Cloth: This poly/cotton material blend is tough enough to hold up to the rigors of a work glove, yet is soft enough to wipe sweat and debris away from your face. Terry cloth can absorb up to 27 times its own weight in water.
Thinsulate: The fibers of Thinsulate™ Insulation are fine, making them ideal for trapping insulating air and reflecting back the body’s radiant heat. Tests have shown that Thinsulate insulation’s ability of an insulation to keep you warm remains relatively unchanged even after repeated machine washings. When you compare equal thicknesses, Thinsulate insulation offers almost one-and-one-half times the warmth of down, providing more warmth with less bulk.
Thread: Thread can be divided in two types: cotton and synthetic. The synthetic threads are usually stronger but in certain applications (like welding gloves) cotton is preferred because a synthetic thread may melt because of the heat. In welding gloves Kevlar might be used as well because it is very strong and heat resistant.
Top Grain
Top Grain: Top Grain Leather is fuzzy on one side and smooth on the other. The smooth side is the side where the hair and natural grain used to be. Top Grain leather is a lower quality material than Full Grain leather. It has less tensile strength because all the natural grain is sanded off, and an artificial grain has been applied.
Unsupported Glove
Unsupported Glove: A glove made by dipping a mold into liquid latex or plastic. The glove is created when the material dries and is removed from the mold.
Welt
Welt: A thin piece of leather sewn into the seam to strengthen it. Often a welt is used in the seam at the crotch of the thumb and the base of the finger.
Wing Thumb
Wing Thumb: The angled construction allows good flexibility with no seams on the palm side to obstruct work or cause fatigue. Found on welding, drivers, leather palm, and ergonomic gloves.
Wool
Wool: Wool is a natural fiber and an excellent insulator. It keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer. Wool retains its shape and resists tearing, abrasion, soiling and flames. It can easily absorb up to 30% of its weight in moisture without feeling damp or clammy.
History of Latex Gloves: Part 1
September 20th, 2009
Charles Goodyear and the Strange Story of Rubber
In midsummer of 1834 a bankrupt hardware merchant from Philadelphia, Charles Goodyear, walked into the New York retail store of the Roxbury India Rubber Co., America’s first rubber manufacturer. He showed the store manager a new valve he had devised for rubber life preservers. The manager shook his head sadly. The company wasn’t in the market for valves now; it would be lucky to stay in business at all.
He showed Goodyear why: rack on rack of rubber goods which had been melted to malodorous glue by the torrid weather. In the company’s factory at Roxbury, Mass., he confided, thousands of melted rubber articles were being returned by outraged customers. The directors had met in the dead of night to bury $20,000 worth of stinking rejects in a pit.
The “rubber fever” of the early 1830s had ended as suddenly as it had begun. At first everybody had wanted things made of the new waterproof gum from Brazil, and factories had sprung up to meet the demand. Then abruptly the public had become fed up with the messy stuff which froze bone-hard in winter and turned glue-like in summer. Not one of the young rubber companies survived as long as five years. Investors lost millions. Rubber, everyone agreed, was through in America.
Goodyear disappointedly pocketed the valve and took his first good look at rubber. He had played with bits of it as a child, but now, at 34, he experienced a sudden curiosity and wonder about this mysterious “gum elastic.” “There is probably no other inert substance,” he said later, “which so excites the mind.”
Returning to Philadelphia, Goodyear was clapped into jail for debt. It was not his first sojourn there, nor his last. He asked his wife to bring him a batch of raw rubber and her rolling pin. Here, in his cell, Goodyear made his first rubber experiments, kneading and working the gum hour after hour.
Charles GoodyearIf rubber was naturally adhesive, he reasoned, why couldn’t a dry powder be mixed in to absorb its stickiness — perhaps the talc-like magnesia powder sold in drugstores? Out of jail again, he tried, with promising results.
He talked a boyhood friend into backing a modest venture. Charles, his wife and small daughters made up several hundred pairs of magnesia-dried rubber overshoes in their kitchen. But before he could market them summer came, and he watched his footwear sag into shapeless paste.
Neighbors complained about Goodyear’s smelly gum, so he moved his experiments to New York. There a friend gave him a fourth-floor tenement bedroom for his “laboratory.” A brother-in-law came to his squalid quarters, lectured him about his hungry children, advised him that rubber was dead. “I am the man to bring it back,” said Goodyear.
He was adding two drying agents to his rubber now, magnesia and quicklime, then boiling the mixture and getting a better product all the time. Impressed, a New York trade show awarded him a medal.
Goodyear lavished all the arts of decoration on his dingy samples, painted them, gilded them, embossed them. Running short of material one morning, he decided to re-use an old decorated sample and applied nitric acid to remove its bronze paint. The piece turned black, and Goodyear threw it away.
A few days later he remembered that somehow the blackened scrap had felt different. He retrieved it from his trash can and found he was right. The nitric acid had done something to the rubber, made it almost as smooth and dry as cloth. This was better rubber than anyone had ever made before.
A New York businessman advanced several thousand dollars to begin production. But the financial panic of 1837 promptly wiped out both the backer and the business. Destitute, Charles and his family camped in the abandoned rubber factory on Staten Island, living on fish he caught in the harbor.
In time, Goodyear got new backing in Boston and again seesawed to momentary prosperity. His partners wangled a government contract for 150 mailbags, to be manufactured by the nitric-acid process. After making the bags Goodyear was so sure of himself that he stored them in a warm room and took the family away for a month’s vacation. When he returned, the mailbags were melted. Underneath their “dry-as-cloth” surface lay the same old sticky gum.
After five futile years, Goodyear was near rock bottom. Farmers around Woburn, Mass. where he now lived, gave his children milk and let them dig half-grown potatoes for food.
The great discovery came in the winter of 1839. Goodyear was using sulphur in his experiments now. Although Goodyear himself has left the details in doubt, the most persistent story is that one February day he wandered into Woburn’s general store to show off his latest gum-and-sulphur formula. Snickers rose from the cracker-barrel forum, and the usually mild-mannered little inventor got excited, waved his sticky fistful of gum in the air. It flew from his fingers and landed on the sizzling-hot potbellied stove.
When he bent to scrape it off, he found that instead of melting like molasses, it had charred like leather. And around the charred area was a dry, springy brown rim — “gum elastic” still, but so remarkably altered that it was virtually a new substance. He had made weatherproof rubber.
This discovery is often cited as one of history’s most celebrated “accidents.” Goodyear stoutly denied that. Like Newton’s falling apple, he maintained, the hot stove incident held meaning only for the man “whose mind was prepared to draw an inference.” That meant, he added simply, the one who had “applied himself most perseveringly to the subject.”
The winter after Goodyear’s discovery was the blackest of his life. Dyspeptic and gout-racked, his health broken, he hobbled about his experiments on crutches. He knew now that heat and sulphur miraculously changed rubber. But how much heat, for how long? With endless patience he roasted bits of rubber in hot sand, toasted them like marshmallows, steamed them over the teakettle, pressed them between hot irons. When his long-suffering wife took her bread from the oven he thrust in chunks of evil-smelling gum.
At night he lay awake, afraid that he would die and the secret die with him. He pawned his watch and the household furniture.
When even the dinnerware was gone, he made rubber dishes to eat from. Then the food was gone too.
That spring he went to Boston to look up friends, found none, was jailed for nonpayment of a $5 hotel bill, and came home to find his infant son dead. Unable to pay for a funeral, Goodyear hauled the little coffin to the graveyard in a borrowed wagon. Of the 12 Goodyear children, six died in infancy.
At last he found that steam under pressure, applied for four to six hours at around 270 degrees Fahrenheit, gave him the most uniform results. He wrote his wealthy New York brother-in-law — who had once lectured him about his parental obligations — of his discovery. This time the brother-in-law, a textile manufacturer, was interested, for Charles told him that interwoven rubber threads would produce the fashionable puckered effect then much favored in men’s shirts. Two “shirred goods” factories were rushed into production and, on the ruffled shirtfronts of dandies, rubber rode to worldwide success.
As soon as he could, Goodyear disposed of the manufacturing interests which might have made him a millionaire and went back to his experiments. He wanted to make everything of rubber: banknotes, musical instruments, flags, jewelry, ship sails, even ships themselves. He had his portrait painted on rubber, his calling cards engraved on it, his autobiography printed on and bound in it. He wore rubber hats, vests, ties.
Goodyear saw rubber as what we know it is today: the first and most versatile of the modern “plastics.” He perceived in it a “vegetable leather” that defied the elements, an “elastic metal,” a wood substitute that could be shaped in molds.
Some of his ideas still turn up as “new” uses for rubber. Many food packagers, for example, now wrap their products in Pliofilm, a rubber-derived plastic; Goodyear suggested the same application in 1850. Rubber paint, car springs, ferryboat bumpers, wheelbarrow tires, inflatable life rafts, and “frogmen” suits are other recent innovations he described a century ago.
Goodyear’s business deals, licensing manufacture under his scores of patents, were ridiculously bad. Shirred-goods rights, for instance, went for royalty of three cents a yard; the licensees made $3 a yard.
Against “patent pirates” Goodyear was forced to prosecute 32 infringement cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In one famous 1852 case, his advocate was no less a personage than Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Goodyear paid Webster $15,000 for temporarily doffing the robes of Cabinet office — the largest fee ever paid an American lawyer to that time. In a two-day speech Webster won a permanent injunction against further patent infringements. It made headlines, but it didn’t stop the piracy.
Goodyear was slow in filing foreign patent applications. But he had sent samples of his heat-and-sulphur-treated gum to British rubber companies without revealing details. One sample was seen by famed English rubber pioneer Thomas Hancock, who had been trying for 20 years to make weatherproof rubber. Hancock noticed a yellowish sulphur “bloom” on the Goodyear sample’s surface. With that clue, he reinvented vulcanized rubber in 1843, four years after Goodyear. By the time Goodyear applied for an English patent he found that Hancock had filed a few weeks earlier.
Offered a half-share of the Hancock patent to drop his suit, Goodyear foolishly declined — and lost. A friend of Hancock named the contested process “vulcanization,” after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
At the London and Paris world’s fairs of the 1850s Goodyear installed great pavilions built entirely of rubber, floor to roof. When his French patent was canceled on a technicality and his French royalties stopped before he could pay his bills, he was seized by gendarmes and hustled off to a 16-day stay at his familiar “hotel” (as he called it) — debtors’ prison. There he received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, bestowed by Emperor Napoleon III.
When he died, in 1860, he was $200,000 in debt. Eventually, however, accumulated royalties made his family comfortable. His son Charles Jr., inherited something more precious — inventive talent — and later built a small fortune on shoemaking machinery.
Neither Goodyear nor his family was ever connected with the company named in his honor, today’s billion-dollar Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the world’s largest rubber business. In 1898, almost four decades after his death, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company was founded and named after Goodyear by Frank Seiberling. Goodyear’s only direct descendant among modern companies is United States Rubber, which years ago absorbed a small company he once served as director.
Today there is a cultivated rubber tree for every two human beings on earth. Three million tree “milkers” harvest the crop. The United States alone imports almost half of it, and synthesizes as much or more from petroleum. Nearly 300,000 Americans earn their livelihoods in rubber manufacturing, this year will produce $6 billion worth of products.
The whole huge apparatus owes its existence to the invincible little fanatic who might have died a bitter man, but didn’t.
“Life,” he wrote, “should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps.”
Reprinted from the January 1958 issue of Reader’s Digest ©1957
History of Latex Gloves: Part 2
September 20th, 2009
William Stewart Halsted, the Father of “Safe” Surgery
In 1878, Caroline Hampton, the niece of famed Confederate general Wade Hampton III, and graduate of New York Hospital, became a scrub nurse to the famous Johns Hopkins surgeon.
Caroline Hampton worked for William Stewart Halsted, who is for many medical and surgical achievements. He is the father of “safe” surgery
Nurses and physicians had to scrub for a long time with harsh soap and then dip their hands in mercuric chloride. Many proved to be hypersensitive to the procedure, including Hampton; she soon developed dermatitis on her arms and hands. Hampton was an excellent scrub nurse and rather than lose her, Halsted contacted Goodyear Rubber Company which had been experimenting with new rubber products. The result was a specially made pair of thin rubber gloves which eliminated the necessity for Hampton to dip her hands in the mercuric chloride. She soon became so adept with the gloves that others, following her example, began using them.
Halsted wrote the following description in a 1913 review article on surgical technique. “In the winter of 1889 and 1890 – I cannot recall the month – the nurse in charge of my operating room complained that the solutions of mercuric chloride produced a dermatitis of her arms and hands. As she was an unusually efficient woman, I gave the matter my consideration and one day in New York requested the Goodyear Rubber Company to make as an experiment two pair of thin rubber gloves with gauntlets. On trial these proved to be so satisfactory that additional gloves were ordered. In the autumn, on my return to town, an assistant who passed the instruments and threaded the needles was also provided with rubber gloves to wear at the operations. At first the operator wore them only when exploratory incisions into joints were made. After a time the assistants became so accustomed to working in gloves that they also wore them as operators and would remark that they seemed to be less expert with bare hands than with the gloved hands.”
Infection dropped from twenty percent to almost nothing, and by 1894 all operating surgeons at Johns Hopkins were ordered to wear rubber gloves. Rubber gloves soon became standard equipment for medical and nursing personnel and, of course, as a suitable climax for the story, Hampton and Halsted were married.
Billhead of a Goodyear Rubber Gloves Distributor
Reference:
Bonnie Bullough: The care of the sick: the emergence of modern nursing. 1979