Cleanroom Tip: Selecting the right cleanroom glove

As cleanroom gloves are the only garments that commonly come into direct contact with the product, it is particularly important that they reach your required standards. Although the primary purpose for wearing gloves is to protect the process and person, each cleanroom in every industry has a different requirement.

Balancing comfort, performance, and protection are all important factors to consider when finding the right glove for the job, ensuring they not only protect the cleanroom environment, but also the wearer.

What to consider when selecting your cleanroom gloves:

• What chemicals do you use? - Chemical resistant gloves are generally made of latex, nitrile, neoprene and PVC
• The dexterity of the glove – how easy the glove is to work with?
• Glove Material
• Required glove length - Elbow length gloves are often recommended when working with chemicals or in pharmaceutical environments 
• Your cleanroom classification 
• Electrostatic discharge (ESD) – Where a cleanroom environment is sensitive to static electric electricity, an ESD resistant glove would be required.
• Do you require the gloves to be double donning?
• Should they be sterile or non-sterile?

Generally for usage in cleanroom conditions it is always better to choose a powder free, post cleaned glove made from Latex, Nitrile, Vinyl or other synthetic materials such as Neoprene. Only these skin-tight powder free disposable gloves guarantee the necessary protection for your products against contamination caused by human skin.

Latex gloves are tactile and are likely to offer more comfort, but brings with it the risk of natural rubber allergy and poor abrasion resistance. While nitrile gloves may not provide the same level of comfort and dexterity, but they offer good ESD properties, have more strength, offer excellent barrier protection to biohazards and avoid the risk of latex allergies.

Cleanroomshop.com offers a wide selection of gloves, from industry leading brands, for all applications. The extensive range offers options for nitrile or latex, sterile or non-sterile powder-free gloves, Wrist length (12”) or elbow length (16”), surgical and examination, as well as anti-static or static dissipative ESD gloves.

For further details on our full range of gloves or cleanroom consumables, please contact us and a member of the team will be happy to help.