Being Clean!

Question.... If everyone is SOOO anal about being clean and sterile (don't bite my head off! I agree we should be anal!!) Why is it that nobody (that I have seen) uses sterilized gloves? Everyone uses gloves right out of the box! Sterile gloves are availible for purchase (many in the medical profession use them!) Just a question.. Baker sendz.........

I actually only found one company a few years back that had sterile gloves, and they cost $5.00 for a pair at the time!!! We would have to pass that cost down to our clients and the hourly price for a tattoo would be pretty outrageous in many peoples eyes. There have been several tattoos that I've used an entire box of gloves during the process (100 gloves per box at a rate of $5.00 per pair of gloves would equate to $250 for the gloves alone!!!) I'd be curious to see if the gloves have come down in price since then, also, we have to use Nitrile gloves in our town due to increasing latex allergies, and I've never seen sterile Nitrile gloves. On a side note, latex gloves can be autoclaved on site. It does soften the material a little bit and I'm not sure if the heat weakens the integrity of the glove or not (being softer I question if during the autoclave process the glove got weakened and more pourous, thus being less of a barrier). I haven't tried sterilizing the Nitrile Gloves because they seem weaker than the latex gloves as it is. I get more defects with the Nitrile than with the Latex (about 10 per box, compared to the 2 or 3 I would get with Black Dragons).

Doctors and Dentists perform minor invasive proceedures every day without using sterilized gloves...Now they don't do open heart surgery with gloves out of the box but minor proceedures ?...Sure!! We don't tattoo in surgical rooms with gowns and masks either but neither does your family doctor or dentist when perfoming minor proceedures...The small bit of extra protection that sterilized gloves provide for such minor proceedures is not only minute but cost ineffective as Krystof stated.

I used to get them for free from a friend who ran a med supply store ......but they are too pricey to use regular The ones i used had the cuffs that went halfway up my forearm ....i really liked that.

I order medical supplies for a hospital. we get latex-free sterile surgical gloves for about $36 for a box of 25 "sensicare w/aloe" from Medline www.medline.com we also get nitrile sterile exam gloves for $12.60 for a box of 100 they come cheaper because their not wrapped in the sterile feild cloth they're just in a sterile package.