Understanding Critical Control Points in Glove Manufacturing

Across various industries, disposable gloves serve as a vital element for ensuring product, consumer, and patient safety, while also safeguarding the wearer against cross-contamination. These gloves are expected to be intact (undamaged) and uncontaminated. However, attempts by manufacturers to cut costs can lead to glove contamination hazards, resulting in microbial and chemical contamination of gloves and diminished physical durability.

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Both this blog post and video delve into the critical control points (CCPs) in disposable glove manufacturing.

1. Water Source Quality: Glove manufacturing consumes significant amounts of hot water, and clean water sources are not always readily available. Water contamination can stem from agricultural fertilizers, pesticides, industrial wastewater, and animal and human sewage. To cut costs, factories might use insufficiently heated water for tank cleaning or reuse contaminated water, leading to potential microbial hazards.

2. Former Cleaning & Drying: Ceramic hand-shaped molds, called formers, are used in glove production and undergo cleaning with hot water and bleach. If the water temperature or chlorine concentration is inadequate, or if the cleaning tools are not properly sanitized, microbial contamination can occur.

3. Coagulant Dipping & Vulcanization: The chemical integrity of polymers varies considerably. Cost-cutting measures by manufacturers may lead to the incorporation of cheap and toxic additives or fillers, which can compromise glove durability, performance, and safety. These inferior materials may also introduce skin irritants, causing allergic reactions or other negative effects.

4. Leaching Tanks: The leaching process removes unwanted chemical residues from gloves. This step requires high water temperatures to be effective and is costly. Factories might economize by reducing the number of washes or neglecting thorough cleaning of the leaching tanks, allowing microbial and chemical residues to persist and jeopardizing glove quality and safety.

5. Glove Drying & Stripping: Inadequate heating or shortened drying times in pre-stripping ovens can leave moisture on the gloves. If packaged while still moist, this can result in pathogenic mold formation, posing contamination risks.

6. Packaging & Hygiene: Packaging gloves in non-sterile or unsanitary environments can introduce contaminants such as human skin particles and fecal matter. Packing rooms with high humidity levels expose gloves to airborne bacteria, insect contamination, and increased moisture, which can lead to fungal growth.

By understanding these critical control points, better-informed purchasing decisions can be made. Solely focusing on glove cost can endanger glove wearers, businesses, and consumers.

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The Eagle Standard

At Eagle Protect, our gloves are produced under the highest quality manufacturing standards and stringent quality control procedures. Our Eagle Standard is unparalleled in the PPE industry, ensuring our products consistently meet high-quality specifications and are manufactured sustainably and ethically, with full supply chain transparency.

Contact us today to learn more about our gloves and clothing, offering ultimate protection for your business against contamination risks.

Good Glove Leaching

Latex Gloves Leached to Clean Gloves

After drying the latex mixture, gloves are subjected to a leaching process to remove residual chemicals and proteins from their surface. A well-designed leaching line should be long to ensure thorough washing of latex proteins. The process requires hot, fresh water to dissolve the proteins effectively. This step is crucial to minimize latex sensitivity. The production of high-quality medical gloves hinges on a comprehensive leaching process. Factories with subpar leaching lines are likely to produce inferior and potentially contaminated gloves.

The glove leaching stage varies between factories depending on the desired quality of exam gloves produced. A longer leaching process incurs higher costs due to the reduced production capacity of disposable gloves. Premium factories continuously circulate fresh water, increasing the marginal cost of manufacturing exam gloves.

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