Gloves for Food Service - False Security?? (a minor rant..)

[allie]

I know it's a bit different but my last job in health care required that we wear gloves when doing anything concerning bodily fluids. We were also to use hand sanitizer along with regular hand washing. The state recommendation was 3 uses of hand sanitizer (anytime you went from one person to another), and then wash your hands. I didn't care for the effects of the hand sanitizer on my hands. It's really like washing your hands in rubbing alcohol for 8-12 hours a day. Not good, especially with dry skin in winter and no amount of moisturizer will stop them from cracking. Not to mention, get your hands dirty and put hand sanitizer on them. You can feel the grime as you rub your hands together. YUCK! All I can see it doing is killing the germs but not necessarily making your hands clean. I prefer to see someone in healthcare wash their hands before they touch me whether they're wearing gloves or not.

I prefer to see food service people wash their hands. Gloves are fine when serving food but handwashing is so important. Gloves have miniscule holes in them so if someone doesn't wash their hands and puts on the gloves, the bacteria can still travel through the gloves. It's not as likely but is possible. The same way a latex balloon loses air after you blow it up......tiny, tiny holes in the latex.