PPE update: Examination gloves

Last year, the EU Commission published interpretational documents to permit the marketing of medical devices as personal protection. While this avoided the nonsense of products needing to be marketed and sold separately, there are still some problem areas.

Examination gloves marketed as medical devices will comply with the EN standard related to medical devices which does include certain protective aspects within it. Unfortunately, it does not specify a minimum length for these products whereas the EN standards relating to protective gloves do set down a minimum length. It is to be hoped that the separate standards committees can see the sense of liaising with each other to establish some compatibility between these standards.