Hand-protection standards - what do they mean?

Safety standards for gloves have proved to be a valuable guide for ensuring worker hand protection.

Employers, risk managers and contractors are acutely aware of the need for compliance with standards that affect the hand safety of workers who are exposed to a range of specific workplace hazards.

An understanding of numeric codes and symbols used for specifying protection levels ensures workers are issued with the correct level of protection for their task. Cost control by matching the protection codes to the appropriate risk is also an important factor.

International (ISO) and Australian/New Zealand standards help classify specific attributes of products and communicate the quality and protection levels of personal protection equipment. While compliance with the AS/NZS 2161 - Occupational Protective Gloves standard is not currently compulsory for glove manufacturers, safety managers view compliance with standards as a key issue.

Like many parts of Asia, Australia has a policy of adopting established international standards for its own use and has implemented a number of identical standards to those used throughout Europe.

For example, the standard EN 420 (AS/NZS 2161.2: 1998) - Occupational Protective Gloves, General Requirements defines general requirements to all protective gloves (except electrician and medical gloves) for glove construction, innocuousness, cleaning, comfort and efficiency, marking and information.

A series of detailed standards follow: AS/NZS 2161.3: 1998 (EN 388) Protective Gloves Against Mechanical Risk; AS/NZS 2161.10: 1998 (EN 374) Protection against Chemicals and Micro Organisms and AS/NZS 2161.4: 1999 (EN 407) Protective Gloves Against Thermal Risks.

Each of these standards is represented by a symbol and number stamped on gloves - the higher the number, the higher level of protection.

For gloves to achieve any of these ratings, they are required to be appropriately tested to determine their rated level of protection. This should prove to be a useful guide for anyone responsible for ensuring the safety of workers.