Match gloves to the real hazard, cut, impact, chemical, or heat, using EN 388 and ANSI ratings, so you buy on protection per dollar, not unit price.
Hand injuries are among the most common, and most preventable, workplace injuries. Yet the single biggest mistake we see procurement teams and safety managers make is buying gloves by unit price instead of by hazard. A glove that's a dollar cheaper but rated for the wrong risk isn't a saving. It's an injury, a lost-time claim, and a compliance gap waiting to happen.
This guide walks through how to match a glove to the actual hazard your workers face, so the next time a quote lands on your desk you can read it against the risk, not just the line price.
Before you look at a single product, answer one question: what is the hand actually exposed to? Most industrial tasks fall into one or more of four hazard families:
Many roles combine hazards (a fabricator faces cut and impact; a chemical handler faces splash and abrasion). Map the dominant hazard first, then the secondary one. The right glove protects against both without killing the dexterity the worker needs to actually do the job.
"Cut-resistant" means nothing on its own. What matters is the rating. Under the current EN 388:2016 standard, cut resistance is measured by the TDM test and scored A through F, with F being the highest. The older "Coup test" number (1 to 5) still appears on some packaging but is unreliable for high-cut materials. In North America, the equivalent is ANSI/ISEA 105, scored A1 to A9, the rating your OSHA documentation looks for. (Worth knowing: the EN test is mandatory to sell a glove in Europe, while the ANSI rating is voluntary in the US and Canada, more on what that means in our EN 388 vs ANSI guide.)
A rough field guide:
Modern high-performance polyethylene (HPPE) blends, often combined with stainless steel or glass fibre, now deliver high cut levels in thin, high-gauge gloves. That matters because thin, comfortable gloves are the ones workers actually keep on. The most protective glove in the world is useless in a pocket.
Cut ratings tell you nothing about impact. For crush and pinch hazards, common in oil and gas, mining, and heavy assembly, you need a glove with a dedicated impact rating. EN 388's final digit (P for pass) covers impact protection on the knuckles and fingers via thermoplastic rubber (TPR) padding. ANSI/ISEA 138 scores impact 1 to 3.
If your crews work around moving steel, pipe, or heavy components, an impact-rated glove with TPR across the back of the hand and fingers is non-negotiable, and it's exactly the spec that gets "value-engineered" out of a cheap quote.
For chemical hazards, the glove material is the whole game, nitrile, neoprene, latex, PVC, or butyl each resist different substance families, and none resists everything. Two numbers matter:
Always check the glove's chemical resistance chart against the specific substances in your process, not just "chemicals" in general. Disposable nitrile is fine for incidental splash; sustained immersion needs a thicker, longer-cuff chemical glove. Getting this wrong is how a "safe" glove still results in a dermatitis claim.
EN 407 covers thermal risk, scoring contact heat, convective heat, and radiant heat separately. The key buyer question is how hot, and for how long is contact maintained. Welding, foundry, and glass work each need different constructions, and a glove rated for brief contact at 100°C will fail at sustained contact with a 350°C surface.
Before you approve a glove purchase, run the quote against these five questions:
Price matters. But price-per-pair is the wrong unit. The right unit is protection per dollar over the life of the glove, and on that measure, the correctly-rated glove almost always wins.
Knight Safety Gear supplies hazard-rated, European-made (Granberg) industrial hand protection to procurement and safety teams across the US and Canada, carrying both EN 388 and ANSI/ISEA ratings. If you'd like help matching a glove to a specific hazard in your operation, get in touch, we'll read the risk before we quote the price.