Many overestimate the protection that hand gloves offer against contagious pathogens and infections. This overestimation results in a false sense of security, pushing users to make mistakes and contract pathogens and infections.

Hand gloves are not immune to pathogens and can get infected with them if they come in contact with any infected surface or medium; whether air, water or solids. The likeliness is higher as you interact longer with your environment.

If your reason to wear gloves was to merely protect your hands, gloves don't give any false sense of security. However, if your intention is to prevent the contraction of pathogens through your mouth or nose, there is a serious risk you must consider: human nature.

As much of a human nature it is, we often bring our hands and face in contact with each other for various reasons: scratching an itch; rubbing our eyes or nose; face palming, covering a cough, sneeze or yawn; etc. We might be able to resist these urges for a short interval of time, but over a long period of time, we will give into these temptations and bring our hands and face in contact with each other.

The point is: if you are wearing hand gloves for a long period of time, it is very likely that you will use your gloved hands to touch your face; thus beating the very purpose of wearing the gloves.

A workaround is to remove gloves every time you need to touch your face. But this is too impractical considering how unconsciously we perform such actions as scratching our face or rubbing our nose; and considering how coughs and sneezes won't give you enough time to remove the gloves or even to sanitise our gloved hands. Speaking of sanitization, the irony is: why wear the gloves in the first place if you are to sanitise. Your sanitised bare hands are as safe as the sanitised gloves.

We can infer from these that gloves are protective only when worn for a short period of time. When worn for longer periods of time, human nature beats the purpose of wearing gloves. It is important to know and consider the limits and imperfections of any protective kits when using them. A false sense of security is no security at all. Hence this article.