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| Courtesy Melaka Tourism |
| A plantation worker harvests
natural latex on a rubber estate. |
Each day hundreds of thousands of health care and
food service workers across the United States don
protective gloves to shield themselves from viruses
and bacteria from AIDS, hepatitis B, and other infectious
diseases. Until a few years ago, nearly all of these
gloves were made of natural rubber latex. Traditionally,
health care and other workers have found latex gloves
to be effective for barrier protection while affording
excellent comfort, fit, and feel.
However, because of the hype about possible allergic
reactions to latex protein, there is a growing shift
toward the use of synthetic gloves. Currently, about
a fifth of the 35 billion gloves used yearly in the
U.S. are made of synthetic materials, predominantly
vinyl or PVC. This proportion is expected to double
over the next couple of years.
Unbeknown to many Americans, vinyl gloves have been
found in numerous scientific studies to be unsuitable
for barrier protection against viral transmission.
At the University of Maryland, Dr. Denise Korniewicz
has found that the chance of vinyl gloves leaking
is 13 times that of latex gloves. A study in 1999
published by A. Rego in the Journal of Infection Control
found the failure rate of vinyl gloves to be in the
range of 26 to 61 percent, compared to latex gloves’
failure rate of 0 to 4 percent.
Not all synthetic gloves are the same as vinyl. The
more expensive nitrile glove was found to have a failure
rate of only one to three percent. Like vinyl, however,
nitrile is more susceptible to tear during use than
latex.
Since the first case of allergic reaction to latex
was reported in 1989, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) had received 2,330 reported cases of allergic
reaction, including five deaths, arising from the
use of latex gloves by March 1999.
“However, the FDA had clarified that none of
the reported cases had been clinically verified,”
says Tan Sri Wong Kum Choon, Chief Executive Officer
of the Malaysian Rubber Export Promotion Council (MREPC).
In this regard, the FDA has published a “disclaimer”
stating that any release by the FDA of such information
“does not necessarily reflect a conclusion by
the party submitting the report or by FDA that the
report or information constitutes an admission that
the device caused or contributed to a reportable event.”
Typical allergic reactions to latex proteins are hives,
runny nose, itchy eyes, asthma and, rarely, anaphylactic
shock. Symptoms such as skin rashes or burning sensations
were also reported, but were likely to be in response
to the presence of residual chemicals rather than
latex protein.
Studies have shown that less than 1 percent of the
population in the United States is latex protein sensitive.
Among health care workers who routinely wear gloves,
the percentage of sensitive individuals is higher
at 3 to 16 percent, as indicated by skin prick testing.
“As the world’s largest supplier of medical
and household gloves, Malaysia has made every effort
to make latex gloves as safe as possible for consumers,”
says Wong. “In consultation with the FDA, we
have introduced a newer generation of latex gloves
under the Standard Malaysian Gloves (SMG) program,
which effectively reduces the protein content from
more than 2,000 micrograms of protein to as low as
50 micrograms per gram of glove.”
Hospital studies in the United States, Europe, and
Canada have shown that the use of latex gloves with
a low content of protein and powder, or powder free,
greatly diminishes the chances of latex sensitization.
The studies also show that workers who are highly
protein sensitive can wear synthetic gloves and work
safely side-by-side with others wearing low protein,
powder-free gloves without suffering any adverse reactions.
Wong commented that the legislation by the states
of Arizona, Rhode Island, and Oregon to prohibit the
use of latex gloves for food service workers in favour
of vinyl gloves may nullify the whole purpose of wearing
gloves for customer protection.
Being a plastic material, vinyl has to be softened
and made flexible through the addition of a plasticiser
called DEHP, a highly toxic chemical, representing
between 20 to 40 percent of the gloves’ content.
Animal studies have shown DEHP to cause serious health
effects on the heart, liver, kidneys, and the reproductive
organs. As such, the Japanese government has recently
banned vinyl gloves containing DEHP for food service
uses after finding that vinyl gloves can leach the
DEHP into food.
On July 12, 2002, the FDA similarly warned in its
Public Health Notification on the plasticiser DEHP
that “precautions [ought to] be taken to limit
the exposure of the developing male to DEHP.”
From an environmental standpoint, vinyl gloves are
non-biodegradable. The disposal of vinyl products
by incineration releases the harmful chemical known
as dioxin, which has been classified as a potential
human carcinogen by the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).
Unlike vinyl and other synthetic substitutes, latex
gloves are biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
Being a renewable resource, rubber plantations on
a global scale have been shown in studies to remove
some 363,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the earth’s
atmosphere annually and replace it with 264,000 tons
of oxygen through photosynthesis.
Besides latex gloves, Malaysia is also a major world
supplier of synthetic gloves. However, Malaysia is
concentrating on producing the safer and better types
of synthetic gloves, which are those made of nitrile
and polyurethane. They are also more expensive than
vinyl and latex.
“We have set up the MREPC office in Washington
to work closely with the FDA and other health and
regulatory authorities in the U.S. to make rubber
gloves safer for American users,” says Wong.
“The MREPC office in Washington is also disseminating
more information to the American public and health
care community to make educated and informed choices
in glove selection.”
For more information, please contact the Malaysian
Rubber Export Promotion Council at www.mrepc.com.
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