Showa-Best Glove has detailed its range of personal protection equipment (PPE) gloves, which is available in an array of colours for various applications.
Gloves are available in bright green, blue, yellow and orange as well as delicate pastels and solid black.
These colour choices help distinguish glove types as well as boost glove wearing by appealing to workers' preferences.
Disposable gloves for the medical profession are in crisp, clean colours.
Both general-purpose and disposable gloves for security, law enforcement and military are often black for stealth.
Cut-resistant, oil-absorbing or general-purpose PPE gloves for the construction and automotive industries are usually a dirt-hiding gray to black, and those for road workers are manufactured in high-visibility neon colours.
Donald F Groce, technical product specialist at Showa-Best Glove, said: 'There are some colours that have traditionally identified the gloves.
'Natural rubber latex gloves' colour comes from a combination of titanium dioxide pigment combined with a small amount of yellow and a pinch of red.
'You would not make nitrile gloves that colour because you want people to notice the difference and understand that the nitrile glove is safe for workers with a latex allergy.
'Thus, we introduced the N-DEX nitrile gloves in powder blue.
'Later, when we produced accelerator-free nitrile gloves, we used green to define them,' he added.
Although manufacturers can produce any glove any colour, in the healthcare industry, each colour must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration with a separate 510K number.
Colour change is considered a significant change in the glove.
There are certain applications where a specific colour is preferred.
In many cases, glove colours reflect widely-accepted social perceptions of colour.
Thus, PPE glove colours for industries that have primarily male workers are generally muted tones of grey or black.
The association of white with cleanliness makes white, translucent and pastel gloves ideal for the healthcare industry.
Pastel colours are often used in gloves for primarily female workforces.
