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Anxiety spreads immediate need for quality gloves There was a time when only debutantes and boxers wore gloves indoors. Now, wearing gloves — particularly latex gloves or synthetic disposables — has become as common in many businesses as ID tags. A climate of fear has be-gloved us at work and play. It took some folks years to get used to the now-common sight of dentists and food-service workers wearing disposables. It may take even longer to get used to the image of office workers, auto mechanics and even highway toll takers wearing them. Call it the gloving of America. Blame terrorism. Blame anthrax. Blame AIDS. Blame E. coli. Blame sanitation worries. There's plenty of blame to go around. Meanwhile, disposable gloves, once the province of proctologists and surgeons, have become a $3 billion global industry. In 1986, about 1 billion disposable gloves were sold worldwide. Last year, in the USA alone, nearly 27 billion gloves were sold. That's about 50 gloves for every hand in America. Some gloves protect products. Other gloves protect people. At the height of the anthrax fear last year, the U.S. Postal Service ordered 90 million synthetic nitrile gloves to protect its workers. Latex gloves were not ordered because some employees have latex allergies. But the recent sales spike — which has leveled — was nothing compared with the glove mania that swept the medical profession in 1987. That's when the Centers for Disease Control first advised health care professionals to wear disposable gloves. In 1991, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandated their use by medical workers. But what is all of this doing to America's cultural psyche? Is a traditionally hands-on nation becoming hands off? Look, but don't touch? While it may once have been ultracool for Michael Jackson to moonwalk in a glove, is this any way for a society to behave? "In post 9/11 America, one does not know how to read the enemy or what form it will take. Post-9/11, people see the invasion of foreign everything." Williams calls this "plague phobia." That's a belief that science can't keep up with disease, forcing folks to take their own actions, such as wearing rubber gloves. A receptionist at the state attorney's office in Inverness, Fla. says that ever since the national anthrax scare that killed five and harmed eight, she has worn rubber gloves when she opens mail at work. "You have to do what you have to do to make yourself feel safer," she says, as she goes through two pairs daily. "I hate to see that it's come down to this." Rubber gloves became a hot number long before the recent anthrax scare. AIDS fears of the mid-1980s jump-started the disposable glove market. And the computer-chip boom of the 1990s resulted in a spurt of disposable glove use in "clean rooms" at companies like Intel, whose chip assemblers wore through 17 million disposable gloves last year. More recently, the Food and Drug Administration got into the act by prohibiting street vendors from having barehanded contact with ready-to-eat foods. Keeping nails clean As the ubiquity of gloves has increased, so have ideas for their use. At Saturn of Kearny Mesa in San Diego, auto mechanics wear disposable gloves to make cleaning up less of a chore. "I used to laugh at mechanics who wore gloves," says the service manager. "Now, it's hard to find a mechanic who doesn't." All vets use disposable gloves for surgeries, but one vet also turns them into mini-hot-water bottles to comfort animals after procedures. "We put them in when the animals are asleep, then take them out once they wake," says the doctor. But fear still drives much glove use, and some workers yank off the gloves when a specific worry fades. About 10% of mail workers now wear protective gloves, the postal service estimates. That's a far cry from the 60% who donned gloves at the peak of anthrax fear late last year. It doesn't take anthrax worries to move some workers to make disposable gloves part of their work uniform. Hairstylists wear them all the time — particularly they are washing a client's hair. During the winter months, hands often dry out, crack and bleed if put in water. Health conscious hairstylists wear the gloves because attending to clients when one has open wounds can lead to the exchange of diseases. As an emergency medical technician volunteer at New York's Central Park Medical Unit, William Mack says he never leaves home without a case snapped on his belt holding two disposable gloves.
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