5 Questions with Harry Reeder, Senior Business Development Manager – West, Best Sanitizers, Inc.

1. 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/colony-forming units (CFUs) are protected from light in a moist, warm environment. This is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria and CFUs to multiply rapidly. Bacteria like E. coli can proliferate (reproduce) every 20 minutes, according to the National Institute of Health. Since bacteria reproduces exponentially through binary fission, a colony can grow from 10 CFUs to 320 CFUs in just two hours — the 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 15-plus-year veteran in food safety, 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 can remain on store shelves for weeks. Remember the funny saying about the 10 second rule on food dropped at home? Ten seconds equals low risk of cross-contamination, but 10 weeks equals food poisoning. Secondly, the most prevalent cases occur 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 the 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 the equipment.

4. How do we prevent glove juice?

This can be the most challenging of all. Education and culture are your best defense. 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 E-2 rating followed by an E-3-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?

Just 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.