Page 1732 - Xmo Strata - Bulletin Archive

Safety, Health, Environmental & Quality Bulletin No 658

07 February 2019

Glove Ratings

You may have seen that gloves are now being manufactured and supplied with glove ratings in a
different format to those seen previously.

Gloves are rated using the European standard EN388, this standard was updated in 2016 and
manufacturers are now in the process of testing their gloves to this new standard. Old gloves rated to
the previous standard are still ok to use and can still be supplied.

The change does not affect the gloves themselves, just the way they are tested and labelled.

The main changes are:

Abrasion (1-4) – a different abrasive paper is used
Cut (1-5) – if the blade is blunted during the test an additional test is needed
Tear (1-4) – no changes
Puncture (1-4) – no changes
Cut (A-F) – a letter A-F is added to show how much force is needed to cut the glove (F is best)
Impact (P) – a letter P is added to the rating if the gloves are tested for impact resistance

As can be seen the order of the ratings has not changed from the old standard, but two additional ratings
have been added.

There are now two ratings for cut resistance, the first is tested in a similar way to previous tests, the
glove is cut up to 60 times using a blade and the rating is based on how many cuts it needs to slice
through the fabric. The glove will receive an X rating if the glove is not cut thorough after 60 attempts
(previously it would have received a 5 rating).

The second cut rating is how much force is needed to cut the glove, this rating is only needed if the
blade was blunted during the first test so it may not appear on some gloves. The rating is A-F with F
being the best protection. An “E” rating is considered approximately equivalent to the old “5” cut
rating.

Therefore, a glove with rating 4X42E would be considered equivalent to a 4542 rating.

If you have any concerns about these changes or need further clarification, please contact your line
manager.