Information on Covid 19 and Environmental Impact of PPE

Hi Julia, I'm a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. I asked one of my colleagues who does research on life cycle assessments of products in the health care sector and this was his response (I hope this helps answer your question): "At this point, I’ve only modelled synthetic rubber (i.e., nitrile) gloves, as that’s the only kind I’ve come across in the hospital purchasing data so far. That said, I’m honestly not sure that there’s enough precision in the data to see a difference (from an environmental perspective) between gloves made from the three different materials. For example, we’d need to know *how much* of each material is used to make each type of glove. Precise data on that can be hard to get. I often find I have to make a very rough guess. At the end of the day, I don’t think there’d be much difference between latex, vinyl, and nitrile gloves, and I don’t think any of these gloves are very significant from an environmental perspective. If we look at everything else that goes into the operations of a hospital (or the activities of a household...) – electricity, fuels, medical devices and equipment, food, patient and employee travel, pharmaceuticals, and more – I think there’s plenty of other things that have a much bigger contribution to the environmental footprint."

Thanks for responding. I am focusing on more on use of gloves among consumers and if these are safer to use versus handwashing in prevention of transmission. I do see news articles about increased disposable gloves and masks in the environment as people toss them out or end up in garbage. I know there are health guidelines to follow but is there information that can be shared that explains  when and why handwashing or a non plastic mask is safe to use. So we can encourage reduction of plastic based PPE  products being used by consumers when it's not always necessary.