Case Studies

Injury While Wearing Protective Gloves

A man was assisting his colleagues to load materials for recycling into a vehicle. He was wearing a pair of protective gloves. While removing the mixed materials from a recycling bin his hand was cut by the neck of a broken glass bottle.

The protective gloves had a ventilated back area and natural rubber coated palm. They also had CE mark and were stated to be suitable for construction, DIY, gardening, glass handling, and general handling purposes.

Cadogans was asked to prepare an independent report addressing the following issues.

• Suitability of the Gloves
• Responsibility of the parties

We checked the gloves provided to the man and found that they carried the correct information and marking.

It was concluded that the front of the gloves was suitable for handling the waste objects as specified.

However, the back was not protective and therefore, in this particular case, did not protect the hand of the man against injury from side or back when reaching into the recycling bin.

Lesson to be learnt

A full risk assessment of the task would have identified the possibility of injury to the back as well as the front of the employee’s hand.