5 Features to Consider When Selecting Hand Protection

With 51% of workplace injuries resulting from hand and finger incidents, it’s important to provide workers with hand protection made for their specific workplace applications.¹ Finding hand protection solutions that are comfortable and don’t get in the way of the job is important to help ensure worker compliance.

Workers are more likely to take their gloves off if they can’t complete a task, which can lead to injury. In fact, 70% of injured workers were not wearing any gloves at all.² That’s why it’s important to provide workers with gloves that are built with features like comfort, dexterity, grip and cut protection. Workers should also have proper training to learn the importance of preventing hand injuries.

It was found that 30% of injured workers were wearing the wrong type of gloves.² With so many options on the market, it can be hard to know exactly which gloves are right for your workers. From finding the right level of cut protection to finding hand protection that helps protect against your exact workplace hazards – below are the features you should consider when selecting gloves.   

Gloves Engineered for Your Industry and Work Application Use

Understanding your workplace applications is the first step toward finding the protection workers need, while the second step is understanding the specific requirements needed for your environment.

For example, workers may need cut protection gloves in manufacturing to help protect against injuries from handling metal sheets, panels and sharp/rough edges. Warehousing workers may need a general-purpose glove for fastening components, parts and maintenance. Workers in the metal fabrication industry may need a high level of cut-protective gloves to help protect against abrasions during chassis assembly, body trimming and foundry operations. There may also be special requirements at certain worksites such as the need for silicon-free gloves.

The Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves are designed to help protect workers in a variety of different industries, including manufacturing, warehousing, metal fabrication, machinery and equipment as well as having a silicon-free option for the automotive industry.

Gloves That Provide Comfort and Dexterity

Comfortable hand protection solutions that provide dexterity help ensure compliance as workers will want to wear their PPE for long shifts. If workers keep their gloves on, the risk of injury is reduced. That’s why it’s important to provide solutions that are lightweight, breathable and allow workers to handle small parts.

The Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves are built out of polyurethane (PU) and have a low content level of dimethylformamide (DMF) below 100 parts per million. With a high level of dexterity, the Perfect Fit Gloves allow workers to fasten components with a reduced risk of hand-cut injuries. The gloves are also engineered with a lightweight, glass fiber-free design with breathable coating for added comfort.

Silicon-free Gloves Designed for Paint Applications

In the automotive industry, silicon-free gloves are a general requirement for applications involving painting chassis due to silicon contamination. Silicon, often found in gloves, contaminates the surface of an unpainted chassis, which can cause improper binding of paint.

Wearing silicon-free gloves prevents surface contamination and helps workers avoid flaking paint from the painted surface of vehicles during inspections. The Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves come in silicon-free options, making them a reliable solution for painting applications.

Gloves with a High Level of Abrasion and Slip Resistance

Depending on the workplace application, workers should be equipped with hand protection that provides a high level of abrasion resistance that can withstand the wear and tear caused by repetitive scraping against metal or other surfaces over time. In oily or wet workplace applications, providing workers with oil and grip slip resistance gloves can help provide dexterity on slippery objects.  

The Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves provide an enhanced abrasion resistance level as well as oil and grip slip resistance to help protect workers from cut hand injuries and increase productivity with improved grip.

Gloves Designed for Easy Selection

It can be challenging to find the right level of cut protection for your workers based on your workplace applications. That’s why Honeywell makes the selection process easy with the Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves.

Designed with ease-of-selection in mind, the Honeywell Perfect Fit Gloves come with a built-in QR code to give you quick digital access to the technical information you need. Additionally, the gloves are designed with Honeywell's color-coding system so you can easily identify the cut protection level across Honeywell’s gloves. The color coding also helps the safety manager’s team select and ensure their workers are wearing the correct glove for the correct application by simply checking the color of the glove from a distance.

 Sources:
¹ISHN, https://www.ishn.com/articles/105011-more-than-half-of-all-injuries-involve-the-hands
²ISHN, https://www.ishn.com/articles/108061-here-are-the-most-common-work-related-hand-injuries

Previously Featured on Honeywell's blog.

Browse hand protection from Honeywell on MSCDirect.com.