Medical glove

Medical gloves are disposable gloves used during medical examinations and procedures to help prevent cross-contamination between caregivers and patients. Medical gloves are made of different polymers including latex, nitrile rubber, polyvinyl chloride and neoprene; they come unpowdered, or powdered with corn starch to lubricate the gloves, making them easier to put on the hands.
Corn starch replaced tissue-irritating lycopodium powder and talc, but even corn starch can impede healing if it gets into tissues (as during surgery). As such, unpowdered gloves are used more often during surgery and other sensitive procedures. Special manufacturing processes are used to compensate for the lack of powder.
There are two main types of medical gloves: examination and surgical. Surgical gloves have more precise sizing with a better precision and sensitivity and are made to a higher standard. Examination gloves are available as either sterile or non-sterile, while surgical gloves are generally sterile.
Besides medicine, medical gloves are widely used in chemical and biochemical laboratories. Medical gloves offer some basic protection against corrosives and surface contamination. However, they are easily penetrated by solvents and various hazardous chemicals, and should not be used for dishwashing or otherwise when the task involves immersion of the gloved hand in the solvent.
History.
Caroline Hampton became the chief nurse of the operating room when Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889. When "[i]n the winter of 1889 or 1890" she developed a skin reaction to mercuric chloride that was used for asepsis, William Halsted, soon-to-be her husband, asked the Goodyear Rubber Company to produce thin rubber gloves for her protection. In 1894 Halsted implemented the use of sterilized medical gloves at Johns Hopkins. However, the first modern disposable glove was invented by Ansell Rubber Co. Pty. Ltd. in 1965.
They based the production on the technique for making condoms. These gloves have a range of clinical uses ranging from dealing with human excrement to dental applications.
Criminals have also been known to wear medical gloves during commission of crimes. These gloves are often chosen because their thinness and tight fit allow for dexterity. However, because of the thinness of these gloves, fingerprints may actually pass through the material as glove prints, thus transferring the wearer's prints onto the surface touched or handled.
The participants of the Watergate burglaries infamously wore rubber surgical gloves in an effort to hide their fingerprints.
Industry.
In 2020, the market for medical gloves had a value of more than USD 10.17 billion and, with growing demand (especially in developing countries), is expected to grow by 9.2 per cent per year until 2028. The majority of medical gloves is manufactured in South East Asia with Malaysia alone accounting for about three quarters of global production in 2020.
Labour rights violations.
There have been several investigations in factories in Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka that documented severe violations of human and labour rights. Both in Malaysia and Thailand migrants represent the majority of workers in hard physical labour. They are frequently recruited by specialized agencies in their less affluent home countries such as Nepal and are often charged with high recruitment fees forcing them into debt bondage. There are documented cases in which employees' passports were withheld by their employers leaving them especially vulnerable to exploitation.
In 2010, for instance, Swedwatch, a Swedish labour right NGO examining a Malaysian factory, reported that most employees were working 12 hours per day seven days a week without overtime pay or payslip, harassment of workers by the management, safety deficits and poor hygienic conditions in employee housing.<ref>