## 1 Introduction  
Abrasions, cuts, and bruises have been some of the leading causes of occupational injury. In Taiwan, they are the second most common injury type at workplaces [1]. Nearly 80% of the abrasions, cuts, and bruises lead to hand or finger injuries. Research [2], studying the incidences involving hand injuries for the US coal mine workers found that 18% of the total hand injuries were responsible for 84% of the total lost work days for the workers. The median lost workdays of those workers due to hand injuries were more than 30 days. The official statistics of the Bureau of Labour of the USA indicated that cuts and lacerations of hand accounted for 64.8% of all cut and laceration incidents [3]. Hand injuries lead to a substantial economic burden, with both high health-care expenditures and productive costs [4, 5]. Hand protections at work are essential for both the safety and health of workers but also for the welfare and well-beings of workers' families [5]. Work gloves are used for the protection of hands from potential physical, chemical, and biological hazards [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Typical physical hazards of hand exposure at work include cuts and stabs [13], vibrations of tools and machines [14, 15, 16, 17], load and pressure [18, 19, 20], high and low temperature [11, 21, 22, 23], and so on. Typical chemical and biological hazards, on the other hand, include hazardous substances (such as pesticides and acids) and organisms such as insects, germs, and even viruses [9, 12]. Work gloves may impose unwanted effects on hand performance [21, 24]. Gloves separate the hand and the contact object and thus reduce the tactile sensitivity of the hand [25; 26; 27; 28]. In addition, the structure of the glove could hamper fingers' movements. This could reduce hand dexterity [13; 29; 30; 21]. The literature [7], has found a negative linear relationship between glove thickness and hand dexterity. In other words, hand dexterity decreases when the thickness of gloves is increased. Wearing gloves could change the hand force exertion of a person. The literature indicates that wearing gloves increases forearm muscle activation [31]. This leads to early muscle fatigue and thus increased the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) [29; 32; 33; 34]. The literature has also found that increasing glove thickness could decrease grip strength in addition to decreasing hand dexterity [27; 35; 36]. The range of grip strength reduction varies, depending on factors such as the number of layers and fitness of the gloves [15; 24; 30; 33; 37; 38]. Even though the effects of gloves on grip strength have been reported, further investigations are required to examine how those effects are affected by handedness and the grip span of the handle. Such information will be beneficial for glove design and selection of work gloves on a workistic. There are studies assessing the effects of wearing gloves on both hand dexterity and grip strength [31; 37]. However, investigations of the effects of wearing gloves on the capability of lifting and carrying materials are not common. Work gloves are made of various materials. Cotton polyester yarn glove, or simply cotton glove, is one of the most commonly used work gloves. This glove provides limited protection for the hand against contacting sharp objects and high/low temperature. It is commonly used in agricultural, construction, and manufacturing industries. Gloves made of knitwear and coated with composite rubber material on the palm are common. The coating on the palm increase friction at the hand-object interface and thus facilitates hand grip of the object being handled. Knitwear gloves incorporated with glass fibers provide resistance to cuts and stabs. However, such a design could increase the stiffness of the protective gloves and thus may change the material handling capabilities of hands. Studies discussing these issues are significant. They will provide useful information for practitioners to choose proper gloves in performing manual materials handling tasks.