The Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule banning powdered latex gloves, saying they pose health risks to both patients and healthcare providers.
The ban should have little impact on prices or availability of substitutes, since the market share for powdered gloves has been declining for at least the past 16 years, according to the agency.
The gloves can cause allergic reactions, severe airway inflammation, wound inflammation, and post-surgical scar tissue formation, according to an FDA statement from March when the agency first proposed the ban.
