Work regulations are important as they put an appropriate duty on an employer to provide certain safety equipment and clothing to their workers. Gloves are one of the most common forms of equipment, but the duty to provide gloves doesn’t just stop there.
Employers must make sure that protective clothing is not going to result in any other sort of accident, which in this case can be caused by the material of a glove getting caught.
Let’s say you have to use gloves for your job and the material gets caught in a moving part of the machinery and pulls your hand or fingers in. Serious injuries can of course be caused this way which is why The Personal Protective Equipment Regulations address this issue by stating the following:
6 – (2) The assessment required by paragraph (1) shall include –
(a) an assessment of any risk or risks to health or safety which have not been avoided by other means;
(b) the definition of the characteristics which personal protective equipment must have in order to be effective against the risks referred to in sub-paragraph (a) of this paragraph, taking into account any risks which the equipment itself may create
What this means is that the equipment shouldn’t create a new risk which may put a worker in harm. A glove that may be large and thick could get caught in moving parts of machinery which is a new risk it creates, and as such, these need to be addressed.
Generally speaking The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations say that equipment being used should have suitable guards and rails to prevent exposure to moving parts anyway. So the simple danger of this is already addressed, but where gloves make create their own potential hazard, then the suitability of the equipment needs to be reassessed.