Occupational Health & Safety: We often think of gloves as…well, just gloves. But they're more than that. Gloves have become one of the most important pieces of PPE that one can wear on the job. Typically, they help protect our hands against scrapes and scratches. More specialized gloves help protect us from cuts and others against chemicals or contaminants. But gloves are much more than that: They actually help us work faster and better, thanks to amazing new designs and materials.
5 comments:
Assuming you frequently wear gloves while working, this article hits it right on the head. However, do people working in this industry regularly take advantage of this protection? The population seems divided. Most of the people I've seen working in the scene shop don't wear gloves. Personally, wearing gloves while working on carpentry calls is a hinderance on my dexterity. This article obviously aims on educating people in a general sense on types of gloves and how they can protect you. In all honesty, though, do we really need all this hooplah on gloves? Most people I know don't use their gloves enough to have such high standards on this topic. The ones they've found at their local Home Depot get the job done.
I agree with Katie. I feel that the majority of people in the theatre industry do not wear gloves unless handling hot lights, hemp rope, or sharp edges. I enjoy the thought that goes into glove production. It is a very informative article about glove making, and if gloves were to grow more popular in the industry, I'm sure more people would source things like this all the time. I am very interested in all the different materials to go into something as average and everyday as gloves. I also feel that places like Home Depot don't source this information and such style for gloves.
I think gloves are a PPE that often gets overlooked. I think one of the problems might be simply how hard it is to find good ones- they're not like safety glasses or ear protection that are pretty much one-size fits all. As a girl, I have serious problems finding gloves that fit me at all, let alone ones that fit and are appropriate for the task at hand. Home Depot doesn't even have gloves in a size small most of the time, and ordering them online is counterproductive since you can't try them on. Gloves are different from other safety protection in that they can actually make a job more dangerous if not properly fit. If they're too loose they can get caught on things or slip, and in general make you more clumsy, which is never good. Properly fit gloves are essential, but they're so hard to find that sometimes they get ignored entirely.
I agree with Katie; I see a lot of people working in the shop without gloves and it does seem like the population is split. I also find that gloves hinder my dexterity in the shop and so only use them when it is really necessary. I also wouldn't trust my hands as much when I wear gloves; I want to be able to feel what I'm holding. As a girl, it was a struggle to find gloves that mostly fit at Home Depot and I'm still not completely happy with them. And Home Depot certainly did not have anywhere near the kind of information this article provided. But, as a student buying gloves, I wouldn't have known what to do with this information because without working in the shop I didn't really know the degree I would be encountering all the different things this article talks about.
Gloves are a such an often overlooked part of the workplace atmosphere, which is weird since to me, it is the PPE I interact with the most. And from all types gloves, ranging from heavy duty welding gloves and chain mail gloves, to soft palmed carpentry gloves and surgical latex gloves, there is always a right and a wrong choice. Unfortunately, this choice is strictly dependant on the individual wearing the glove. Personally I have problem finding gloves big enough to fit my hands so size is most always a more important factor for me, while my girlfriend who has smaller hands is free to make a choice more heavily influenced by color of functionality with a larger selection of gloves offered in her size.
I almost wish that there were stores than only sold gloves, like shoe stores. I often am able to either find the glove in the size, but not the function I want, or the color but not the material. I am sure that if there was a store with a larger variety of choices that people would wear the appropriate glove much more often and that that would have an immediate positive effect in workplace injury rates.
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