When workers handle aggressive chemicals such as acetone, it can create significant safety and productivity challenges.

For years, employers have faced a difficult trade-off: Bulky reusable chemical gloves offer protection but limit dexterity and slow down precision work. Disposable gloves, meanwhile, enable flexibility for certain tasks but often can’t hold up to harsh solvent exposure.

“Essentially what workers have been doing is taking off that big, bulky reusable chemical glove and putting on a traditional disposable glove when they’re working with more aggressive chemicals—and with acetone, it’ll permeate through in less than one minute,” says Kevin Brennan, Ansell’s category manager for single-use disposable gloves in North America.

“It’s been a really big pain point in the industry for quite some time.”

Compounding worker safety issues is the fact that many disposable gloves begin to degrade almost immediately when exposed to aggressive solvents.

“In addition to that permeation, the glove will start to elongate and get weaker,” Brennan says. “Before the glove even starts to break down, the chemical has already gotten on your skin. And with prolonged exposure to some of these ketones, it can impact your nervous system.”

A Multi-Layer Approach to Chemical Protection

Recent innovations in glove design are making it so that employers don’t have to choose between chemical protection and dexterity. Instead of relying on single-material or blended formulations, Ansell has developed the TouchNTuff™ 93-800, a first-of-its-kind disposable glove engineered for chemical resistance.

“It is multi-layer and multi-polymer,” Brennan says. “The outside is latex, giving it the best resistance to some ketones. And then there are other proprietary layers underneath.”

Read more: Disposable Gloves: 5 Tech Innovations to Get Your Hands On

Layered formulated gloves are constructed with multiple, distinct layers of material, each engineered to resist specific types of chemicals. This structure can provide enhanced barrier protection because chemicals must penetrate several layers, often slowing permeation rates and increasing breakthrough time. As a result, layered gloves are typically preferred for handling highly aggressive or mixed chemical exposures.

Blended formulation gloves, on the other hand, are made from a single, homogeneous mix of materials. While they can offer good overall resistance and flexibility, their uniform structure may allow certain chemicals to permeate more quickly compared with layered designs, especially when exposed to complex or highly aggressive substances.

Ansell’s 93-800, featuring Microchem™ chemical barrier technology, uniquely combines polymers to slow permeation to protect workers while maintaining glove integrity. The result is a disposable glove that offers about 15 minutes of resistance to acetone and about 10 minutes of resistance to other harsh ketones such as methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and methyl propyl ketone (MPK).

“The 93-800 hits a nice sweet spot where you have the dexterity and tactility of a disposable but with the chemical resistance of a reusable,” Brennan says.

WATCH: Ansell’s Kevin Brennan breaks down why traditional disposable gloves fall short when exposed to harsh solvents, and what that means for worker safety, productivity and cost on the shop floor:

Durability and Visibility Expand the Value

Chemical resistance may be the main draw, but there’s more. Durability and safety also play important roles in glove selection, particularly in manufacturing environments where workers frequently encounter sharp edges and abrasive surfaces.

With the 93-800, “one of the things that people are most surprised about is it has EN 388 Level 1A cut protection,” Brennan says.

“This isn’t going to replace an A9 cut glove, but it is giving cut protection that’s suitable for single-use disposable tasks.”

High-visibility orange coloring and silicone-free construction further expand the glove’s usefulness across industries, including metalworking, aerospace and marine manufacturing. These environments often rely heavily on acetone not only for cleaning but also as part of broader manufacturing processes.

Read more: High-Dexterity Work Gloves: How the Right Pair Empowers Precision and Protection

A Safer Glove That’s Also Better for the Environment

Employers concerned about their carbon footprint are placing greater emphasis on sustainability when evaluating personal protective equipment.

Like other gloves from Ansell, the 93-800 is manufactured in a green facility where 83 percent of the energy comes from renewable sources. “We believe that the biggest impact to CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions is from the manufacturing process,” Brennan says.

“It isn’t just about protection and safety,” he adds. “We want to help customers do the right thing for the environment and meet their sustainability goals.”

All things considered, compared with traditional options for chemical handling, innovative products such as Ansell’s TouchNTuff 93-800 are changing the equation for manufacturing teams.

“Safety managers are going to be happy, because their people can do their job more efficiently. And workers are going to love that, too. Procurement people are going to like it as well, because it’s a lot more economical than reusable gloves,” Brennan says.

“We feel like this is a solution everybody at the facility is going to be happy with.”