OTTAWA -- Wearing rubber gloves is becoming a common measure during the COVID-19 pandemic among people who must either continue to work in the public, or who go shopping for essential supplies like groceries.
But if you don't remove the gloves properly, your efforts to keep your hands clean will be wasted.
Sgt. Mark Gatien, a 35-year veteran of the Ottawa Police Service, posted a short video tutorial to social media Monday, to offer basic instruction on how to safely remove rubber gloves.
"At the grocery stores and some places of the station, I've been watching people take their gloves off and they're not doing it properly," he said.
Gatien says when you take the first glove off, pinch the portion near your wrist and roll it inside out as you remove it, so that you don't touch the glove.
Next, you take the glove you just removed and roll it into a ball in your other, still-gloved hand.
Then, you place one or two of your fingers under the wrist portion of your glove and again turn it inside out, making a bag for the first glove.
"Everything is inside the glove now," Gatien says.
Finally, throw the gloves in the trash.
"Do not put it on the floor, do not put in the parking lot by the grocery carts or whatever, put it in the garbage please," Gatien says.
Discarded gloves have become a problem in many parking lots as more people wear them when venturing out in public. Companies such as Loblaws and Walmart have been asking customers to throw used gloves in garbage cans.
