Sterile reusable clothing has previously been used in many health care environments. Due to the inconvenience and cost of cleaning and providing sterile storage for such clothing, a switch to disposable products has generally occurred. For example, the demand for disposable shoe covers has increased substantially during the past several years and is now standard practice for most surgical procedures. Health care workers in emergency rooms and other medical environments wear disposable shoe covers to protect the health care environment from microbial and other types of contamination carried by shoes and to protect the respective health care worker from contamination by blood and other body fluids.
In addition to the health care industry, it is necessary in many other industries to wear protective clothing to prevent contamination of clean room type working environments. In certain environments it is also necessary to prevent stray electricity such as static electricity and sparks, from damaging sensitive electronic circuits or accidentally igniting a possibly volatile atmosphere.
Disposable shoe covers are worn in a wide variety of industrial environments for many reasons such as providing either a conductive or non-conductive electrical surface depending upon the environment preventing contamination of both the wearer and the surrounding environment, and providing a non-skid walking surface for the wearer. Disposable shoe covers have often been manufactured from a single type of material. Since it is difficult to find a single material with all the desired characteristics such as, fluid resistance, breathability, non-skid surface, anti-static and durability, some desired characteristics have frequently been enhanced to the detriment of other desired characteristics.