Food Service Gloves and Typhoid Mary

Disposable Gloves

• All About Food Service Gloves
• FDA Code and Food Service Gloves
• Cross Contamination and Food Gloves
• Food Gloves and Typhoid Mary
• Hygiene Tips for Food Service Gloves
• Earth-Friendly Hybrid Food Gloves

Many are familiar with the DHEC poster that announces the ten most common causes of infection: it is a photo of a pair of hands with their ten fingers raised. The importance of washing hands cannot be underestimated. But this measure alone is not enough in many circumstances to reduce harmful bacteria transfer from hand to food.

The introduction of gloves in the food industry is a fairly recent phenomenon in our country. The practice took root in the early 1990’s after regional outbreaks of Hepatitis A were traced back to individual infected food workers who up to that point commonly used their bare hands when assembling food orders.

The first highly publicized case of a food worker unwittingly transmitting disease to the public was that of Mary Mallon who was sadly renamed Typhoid Mary after her uncovering. Mary Mallon was an immigrant Irish orphan who worked her way up the domestic labor ladder to that of household cook for New York City’s wealthy. The cook was one of the most trusted and highest paid of house staff.

In 1908, the household for which Mary cooked contracted six cases of typhoid. Theirs was the only home affected in the area and this set bacteria detectives off on a considerably narrowed sleuthing path. It was discovered that several households that Mary had worked for prior to her current position had also suffered isolated typhoid outbreaks during her kitchen employment. It was believed that Mary was a ‘healthy carrier’ of the typhoid bacilli and was unwittingly transmitting it to others through her food handling.

The understanding of bacteria and its infectious spread was a fairly recent scientific discovery and not one yet easily understood by the general public. Mary Mallon refused to cooperate with health department officials and would not give them specimens to test. She was then forcefully removed from her employment and put into quarantine at a hospital on North Brother Island of the shores of New York.

Because Mary was certain she had never had typhoid, she could not accept the evidence that she was spreading this fecal-oral disease. She also protested that officials implied that she didn’t wash her hands before working with food. The type of hand washing and scrubbing necessary to greatly reduce this chance on a healthy carrier was of a rather brutal and vigorous nature, not what could be considered part of a normal routine.

In fact, Mary did test positive for the typhoid bacilli which meant that she had once had a very mild case of typhoid and must have thought it to be nothing more than the flu. Her antibodies had not fully eradicated the typhoid and it quietly remained in her system as a communicable disease.

Mary was released from the island after a couple of years with the promise that she would not return to working in the kitchens of New York. However, with domestic labor generally not providing decent wage or living prospects apart from returning to the role of cook, Mary eventually reappeared in the kitchen circuit under a new name. This time she was the cook for a maternity hospital and its staff. When 25 people, both staff and patients, became ill with typhoid, the gig was up for Mary. She returned to North Brother Island for the remainder of her life.

Would the use of food service gloves have kept Typhoid Mary from a life of government enforced quarantine? Not necessarily so, if one is to consider the findings of a Rutgers University study of food service gloves. While the Rutgers study found that there was a significant reduction of bacteria transfer from hand to food when gloves were in use, it at the same time discovered that most gloves are permeable to bacteria. As a result, careful consideration should be given to proper glove sizing and glove type for use in the food work place. It is also important to replace disposable gloves frequently, because it takes time for the bacteria to travel through the glove material. Furthermore, employee hand washing remains of primary importance alongside the teaching of proper glove usage.