Choosing Your Rubber Gloves
First things first, you need to choose from which PPE you want your business to invest in. Next, think about your operations and what kind of PPE gloves, latex or nitrile, household or industrial, meet your requirements.
Of course, we have a solid focus on gloves, but this does apply to the rest of the PPE you’re investing in. If you’re unsure where to start, you can follow these basic guidelines.
Make a note of all the tasks you conduct within your business or service and take time to identify the risks involved. The chances are you’re already in possession of a ton of documentation on this matter. For example, if you’re buying on behalf of a hospital, then you know gloves are already an essential purchase in many areas, such as cleaning, examination, disposable, and surgery.
Once you’re here, make sure you’re taking time to figure out which rubber gloves are best for the job. Put your resource management skills to the test and order the correct gloves for the job and try to order the correct amount to optimize your budget. If you’re a business that’s operated for some time, you should have some idea what sort of quantities you need to order.
In some cases, you may want to go deeper into your analysis and get the facts. For example, you could dive into the accident records for your company to highlight what kind of accidents have been reported, taking time to highlight any consistent patterns that could be addressed.
Find that shopfloor workers are continuously getting lightly injured while working at a particular machine. It may be time to look into introducing rubber gloves and other forms of PPE into these areas.
Once you’ve gathered all this information, you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for moving forward with your purchase.
Ensuring Your PPE is Meets Standard
Before you even start looking into suppliers for your PPE, you must take time to look into the rules, regulations, and standards of your country of operations. For example, there’s no point buying medical-grade Nitrile gloves for carrying out surgical procedures if the gloves aren’t manufactured to your country’s medical practicing standards and, therefore, can’t be used.
To prevent this from being an issue, take time before ordering to make a note of what kind of policies and regulations you need to meet. For example, if you’re a company or organization operating within the EU, you need to make sure you’re adhering to the EU’s PPE guidelines.
Using the EU as an example, PPE is categorized into three classifications that break down as;
- Minimal risk – PPE Category I
- Medium risk – PPE Category II
- High risk – PPE Category III
You’ll need to adhere to the EN standards, and you’ll need to ensure the gloves are tested in alignment with the PPE testing standards, in Europe’s case, a testing third-party which may be;
- QIMA
- Intertek
- Bureau Veritas
- SGS
- TUV
In short, make sure you’re aware of the PPE rules and regulations.
Finding Suppliers & Creating Documentation
Now, with everything clear in your mind so far, it’s time to start seeking out suppliers. You can effectively ship from anywhere in the world, but it will be a case of figuring out the supplier that best suits your needs, and the best way of doing this will be to get in touch and ask for an order.
To save time, you will want to think about several aspects of the order that you can determine beforehand. Some ideas to think about include;
| Available stock | Can they fulfill your required order? Is there the correct quantity of the right kind of rubber gloves? |
| Delivery and Logistics? | Can they fulfill your order in the required timeframe? |
| Consistency | Are you placing a one-time order, or will you need the company to fulfill regular orders on a direct-debit basis? |
| Meeting required standards | Are the gloves manufactured to official standards, and will they be accepted in your country? Can your supplier provide the correct documentation to prove this? |
| Quality of Product | Are the gloves made to a high enough quality that they’re going to last and will enable you to do your job properly? |
| Budget and Price | Are the gloves available priced at a cost to suit your budget? |
| Social Proof | What is the supplier’s reputation? Are they revered by their customers, or do they have negative reviews? Can your chosen supplier be trusted? |
| Customer Service | Does the supplier have a customer support team you can get a hold of easily if you have any requests, questions, or changes you need to make? Is the team available, and can they speak your language while providing support for your region? |
*At Kim Gloves, we tick all of the boxes above.
Creating Your Order
After some time researching, you should be able to narrow down your list of suppliers to just one or two, and then it’s just a cause of choosing the one that’s best for you. Since we at Kim Gloves know our process inside and out, we can accurately represent how things go. So let’s take everything we’ve spoken about into account.
Firstly, you can check out our Certificates and Awards page and see that the production factory is certified by the leading ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 1401:2015 guidelines and are audited and quality checked by SGS, which means it’s all within regulations.
The page is also full of certifications and copies of test reports to see exactly what guidelines and regulations are in place and what kind of quality you can expect from your order gloves. There are also mentions of a range of awards the company has won for its manufacturing processes, which is a great deal of social proof to show how reputable the company is.
So, let’s say you want to move forward with your order. As above, the vast majority of orders, especially for bulk, are created using custom orders. This means you’ll need to get in touch by filling out the contact form and requesting the items you want, and you’ll be connected with a member of the sales team who will begin the process of creating your order.
From here, you may need to sort out the details of the order, but at this point, you’ll be in touch with the right people who will be able to answer all your questions. That’s important to remember; ask questions.
Rules and Regulations around the World
We’re going to talk about the rules and regulations you’ll need to know around the world. This is basically taking what we did in the previous chapter with the EU example. It doesn’t matter what sized business you are or whether you’re a small business operating in a single country or a worldwide brand. This section will introduce you to everything you need to know.
The United States of America
In the US, the gloves you purchase for any PPE means need to be tested by the FDA rules, guidelines, and regulations. This includes taking into consideration what you define as ‘medical gloves.’
For brevity, medical gloves count as gloves you would wear when touching anybody else and their bodily fluids, handling certain drugs or medication, and potentially contaminated items, such as gowns, bed sheets, and so on.
Specifically, medical gloves must be approved Class I gloves, and they must be shipped with a 510(k) premarket notification. This proves they have been tested to be leak and tear-resistant, as well as for their biocompatibility.
Outside of the FDA, which refers to gloves used as PPE outside of medical situations, PPE must be manufactured in accordance with OSHA guidelines, which is the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Under OSHA, employers must provide PPE gloves if the employee is at risk of coming into contact with a common hazard, such as contact with harmful substances, cuts, substance burns, thermal burns, and so on. In addition, all of the regulations are listed under the hand protection standard known as OSHA CFR 1910.138.
Europe
If you’re operating within the EU (which does include the UK at present, but this is subject to change as Brexit procedures continue to move forward), all your PPE gloves must fall under the standards as laid out by the Regulation EU 2016/425 (PPE). Furthermore, all gloves must meet or exceed the standard requirements for each glove type and must bear their own CE marking.
It is up to manufacturers to be responsible for this process, at least those operating in the EU. However, as a business, regardless of whether you’re buying products from inside the EU or importing them in, you need to make sure you’re paying attention to ensure that this is the case. It’s just a responsible business practice.
As stated by EU rules, importers and brand owners are responsible of buying manufactured products from abroad. Depending on the situation you’re investing in PPE for, several testing scopes need to be adhered to. For example, for protection against dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms, the testing scopes look like this;
- EN 420 – Protective gloves – General requirements
- EN ISO 374-1 Protective glove against dangerous chemicals
- EN ISO 374-5 – Protective gloves against micro-organisms
- EN 374-2 Determination of resistance to penetration
- EN 16523-1 Permeation by liquid chemicals under conditions of continuous contact
- EN 374-4 Determination of resistance to degradation by chemicals
- ISO 16604 Procedure B: Protection against viruses
Various glove regulations are applied in the same way if you’re working with food and a whole new set working in a medical environment.
Just as the US has guidelines as to how gloves should be ordered, the EU has a set of innocuousness criteria that businesses providing and using PPE need to follow and meet the expectations of. Some of the rules and legislation here include;
- All gloves must offer the greatest possible degree of protection in the given situation
- If the glove has seams, they should not reduce the performance of the glove
- Natural rubber gloves should be tested for extractable proteins to mitigate allergic reactions of wearers (EN 455-3)
- If cleaning instructions are provided, the level of performance of the product must not reduce, even after the maximum number of washes outlined in cleaning instructions
The EU purposefully carries out investigations and checks on businesses to ensure that these guidelines are being met. Again, all the most up-to-date information can be found on the Regulation EU 2016/425 (PPE) documentation, and it falls on you, and a supplier, business, or service owner, to ensure that you’re up to standards and hitting these guidelines.
Australia
There are three main regulations you need to think about regarding PPE gloves in the workplace in Australia. These are;
- AS/NZS 2161.10.3:2005 – Occupational protective gloves, Part 10.3: Protective gloves against chemicals and micro-organisms – Determination of resistance to permeation by chemicals
As long as the gloves you’re investing in as a business aligns with these procedures and protocols, you’ll be operating legally. Just like the EU and USA, the Australian Department of Health can carry out inspections to ensure you’re handing out the right PPE that’s suitable for the task at hand and the associated risks, i.e., not offering latex gloves when around hot temperature environments.
If you’re purchasing medical gloves, you need to invest in gloves that align with the AZ/NZA 4011.1:2014 regulations and the latest COVID-19 guidelines, all of which can be found online on the representative websites.
Buy rubber gloves
PPE matters, and your business’s stability, growth, and effectiveness indeed rely on it as a solid foundation for your operations. In addition, investing in and providing proper PPE shows that you care for your service users and employees morally and productively and keep things running smoothly.
Suppose you’re looking for a certified supplier of PPE gloves for your business available in container size orders (both 20 and 40ft variants) to be delivered anywhere in the world while providing the quality you’d expect from a professional manufacturer. In that case, Kim Gloves is here for you.
The COVID-19 pandemic came out of nowhere unexpectedly and took much of the world by surprise, and while it seems the world has been affected, there’s no telling what the future could bring, so make sure you’re alert, aware, and as prepared as possible.
If you can do this, you’re actively giving your business the best chances of running smoothly and succeeding in everything you do.
