5 Questions with Brian Salone, Regional Sales Manager – Southwest, Best Sanitizers, Inc.

1. What is "glove juice?"

What is “glove juice?” Glove juice is the name given to the bacteria-rich moisture that forms inside work gloves when proper hand hygiene procedures are not followed.

 

2. How does glove juice develop?

When gloves are worn, bacteria are protected from light in a moist, warm environment. This warm, moist environment is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria to multiply rapidly and create more colony forming units (CFUs). It is well reported that bacteria like E. coli can double (reproduce) every 20 minutes. Since bacteria reproduces exponentially through binary fission, a bacteria can grow from 10 CFUs to 320 CFUs in just two hours — which is a common average time an employee’s hands are gloved between breaks. What’s inside the glove after several hours is what we refer to as “glove juice.”

3. What are the risks? The hands are gloved to prevent cross-contamination.

Speaking as a 20-year food safety veteran, I can share a few examples of how glove juice creates inherent risk. First, gloves provide a false sense of security and sanitation to employees and customers. That’s because you can’t see glove juice and the problems it can create despite the reality of the risks. We have all seen employees working with torn gloves or gloves with missing fingertips, right? Remember we discussed above those 320 CFUs inside the glove in a two-hour period. Well, yes, they leak out onto food products and food contact surfaces. There, they continue to multiply until the food is consumed or the surfaces are cleaned and sanitized.

The biggest risk is the product(s) you are producing that can remain on store shelves for weeks. Remember the funny saying, “10 second rule,” on food dropped at home? Ten seconds equal a low risk of cross-contamination, but 10 weeks equal food poisoning. The second most prevalent risk occurs at break time when employees remove their gloves. Best practices would dictate this should only be done at the wash station, where employees are required to immediately dispose of contaminated gloves and thoroughly wash their hands prior to going on break. What happens in reality: Employees’ hands are hot from sweating, and they can’t wait to remove their gloves and immediately wipe their hands dry on their clothing or aprons. I see this every week in the field. Now those 320 CFUs are on their clothing for the remainder of the day, cross-contaminating everything they touch and brushing up against equipment.

4. How do we prevent glove juice?

This can be the most challenging of all. Education and culture are your best defenses. Without overcomplicating the issue while training your employees, log reduction of CFUs on employees’ hands is the foundation for preventing glove juice. By lowering the number of bacteria on the hands prior to gloving, employees are lowering the number of bacteria that can replicate in the warm, moist environment of the gloved hand. Hand washing reduces physical soils, and hand sanitizing reduces pathogens prior to placing hands inside gloves. Using sanitizing hand soaps with an E2 rating followed by an E3-rated hand sanitizer will provide the greatest log reduction of CFUs on hands prior to gloving.

5. How can we bring awareness to our employees?

Please explain to your employees that every log reduction, i.e. 99.9% to 99.99%, is a 10-fold reduction of CFUs on their hands prior to gloving. The lower the count to begin with, the lower the count will be when removing gloves — which is lower risk to themselves and the organization!