Everett, Wash.
Published: Monday, March 26, 2007

Disposable gloves can't overcome grimy habits

 The attempt earlier this year to allow dogs inside bars rightly set off a wave of protest at the unsanitary prospect of it all. A nightmare of mangy germiness. The very thought of Scooby snacks mingling with that communal bowl of popcorn. Eeeewwwwww.

With that grody bone of an idea buried, what of the real menace facing us? What are we to do about humans in restaurant kitchens? And the folks at the fast food places?

The New York Times recently reported that 20 years after disposable gloves became common in restaurant kitchens, it is not clear that they prevent the transmission of illness.

Disposable gloves can prevent most of the millions of bacteria teeming on human hands from being transmitted to food, but only if they are clean. Hence the problem.

A survey of thousands of U.S. restaurant workers revealed that more than a third said they did not always change their gloves between touching raw meat or poultry and ready-to-eat food.

When other surveys show that doctors don't wash their hands often enough, what can we expect?

We've all seen the fast food worker, wielding magical gloves, make your sandwich, take your money, operate the cash register, hand you change and your order, and then start the process over without a change of the gloves. Perhaps there was a sneeze, or an ear scratch, or a telephone call in the midst of it all. The thinking appears to be, as long as the hands underneath the gloves are kept clean, everything's OK. The magical gloves also don't require the food-worker to wash his or her hands before donning them. And these are the food-workers at the front counter, the ones you can see. Imagine what goes on behind the scenes.

The fear is that gloves have replaced hand-washing.

The disposable gloves are also under scrutiny because it turns out a lot of people are allergic to latex. Rhode Island, Arizona and Oregon have banned latex gloves from restaurants because of consumer complaints and workers' compensation claims stemming from allergies, according to the Times.

As an alternative, many restaurants use vinyl gloves, but vinyl contains Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, a chemical that some scientists believe can cause testicular damage in infants and young men. It is classified as a carcinogen in California. Japan banned vinyl gloves from restaurants in 2001 after large quantities of DEHP were found in food prepared by workers wearing them. Mmmmm mmmm good.

We stand strongly in favor of the tried and true, to place extreme emphasis on educating food workers to use lots and lots of hot, soapy water in between every single task, as if they weren't going to use gloves at all.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA