By Bruce Horovitz

There was a time when only debutantes and boxers wore gloves indoors.

Now, wearing gloves — particularly latex gloves or synthetic disposables — has become as common in many businesses as ID tags.

A climate of fear has be-gloved us at work and play. It took some folks years to get used to the now-common sight of dentists and food-service workers wearing disposables. It may take even longer to get used to the image of office workers, auto mechanics and even highway toll takers wearing them.

Call it the gloving of America.

Blame terrorism. Blame anthrax. Blame AIDS. Blame E. coli. Blame sanitation worries. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Meanwhile, disposable gloves, once the province of proctologists and surgeons, have become a $3 billion global industry. In 1986, about 1 billion disposable gloves were sold worldwide. Last year, in the USA alone, nearly 27 billion gloves were sold. That's about 50 gloves for every hand in America.

The cheapest gloves, such as those used by home health care workers, can cost as little as 2 cents a glove. The most costly gloves, used for surgery and computer-chip manufacturing, can fetch as much as $2 a pair.

Some gloves protect products. Other gloves protect people. At the height of the anthrax fear last year, the U.S. Postal Service ordered 90 million synthetic nitrile gloves to protect its workers. Latex gloves were not ordered because some employees have latex allergies.

But the recent sales spike — which has leveled — was nothing compared with the glove mania that swept the medical profession in 1987. That's when the Centers for Disease Control first advised health care professionals to wear disposable gloves. In 1991, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandated their use by medical workers.

But what is all of this doing to America's cultural psyche? Is a traditionally hands-on nation becoming hands off? Look, but don't touch? While it may once have been ultracool for Michael Jackson to moonwalk in a glove, is this any way for a society to behave?

"In post 9/11 America, one does not know how to read the enemy or what form it will take," explains Terry Williams, sociology department chairman at New School University. "Post-9/11, people see the invasion of foreign everything."

Williams calls this "plague phobia." That's a belief that science can't keep up with disease, forcing folks to take their own actions, such as wearing rubber gloves.

Perhaps that's why the nation's biggest maker of latex gloves, Kimberly-Clark, has expanded the sale of its Safeskin line of rubber gloves to the mass market. It just rolled out the Safeskin PFE glove line at Wal-Mart stores. Next up, the Publix grocery chain. The gloves already are sold at Costco.

"People are more easily frightened," says Joanne Bauer, president of the health care division at Kimberly-Clark. "So they're giving more consideration than they used to to using things like gloves."

People like Pam Requena.

She's a toll collector for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. She starts collecting tolls each day in disposable gloves. By the end of the day — some 1,000 cars later — her hands often get too sweaty and the gloves are usually off.

She wears the gloves to protect herself from germs. Her hands easily dry and crack — and she doesn't like to expose open wounds. Drivers don't always appreciate that. One woman huffed, " 'If you don't want to touch me, I don't want to touch you either,' " Requena recalls.

Peggy Sims swears by gloves.

She's a receptionist at the state attorney's office in Inverness, Fla. Ever since the national anthrax scare that killed five and harmed eight, she has worn rubber gloves when she opens mail at work.

"You have to do what you have to do to make yourself feel safer," says Sims, who goes through two pairs daily. "I hate to see that it's come down to this."

Rubber gloves became a hot number long before the recent anthrax scare. AIDS fears of the mid-1980s jump-started the disposable glove market. And the computer-chip boom of the 1990s resulted in a spurt of disposable glove use in "clean rooms" at companies like Intel, whose chip assemblers wore through 17 million disposable gloves last year, says spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

More recently, the Food and Drug Administration got into the act by prohibiting street vendors from having barehanded contact with ready-to-eat foods.

Ironically for some folks, the biggest danger is the glove itself — at least the latex variety. The FDA is considering a requirement for hospitals and physicians to report all allergic reactions to latex gloves.

Wearing latex gloves nearly killed Howard Bueller.

The dermatologist, from Boca Raton, Fla., breaks into severe hives at any contact with latex. "It's a hassle just to stay alive," he says.

Bueller can't visit hospitals. And his patients can see him only in his latex-free offices.

For nearly 10 years, Lise Borel was a dentist in Exton, Pa. But she had to quit after developing life-threatening allergies to latex gloves. Among her ailments: latex-induced asthma and a series of heart problems.

"Gloves are not a silver bullet," says Borel, who co-founded the National Latex Allergy Network. The group wants most latex glove use replaced with synthetic gloves. "In most cases, good hand washing probably accomplishes more than wearing gloves," she says.

Don't tell that to Ann Glazier. She oversees security for Planned Parenthood. Since 1998 — when mailed threats increased — mail handlers at all 800 Planned Parenthood offices have been advised to open mail with gloves.

As the ubiquity of gloves has increased, so have ideas for their use. At Saturn of Kearny Mesa in San Diego, auto mechanics wear disposable gloves to make cleaning up less of a chore. "I used to laugh at mechanics who wore gloves," says Armen Arakelian, service manager. "Now, it's hard to find a mechanic who doesn't."

All vets use disposable gloves for surgeries, but James Berg also turns them into mini-hot-water bottles to comfort animals after procedures. "We put them in when the animals are asleep, then take them out once they wake," says Berg, owner of the Animal Veterinary Center in Bear, Del.

But fear still drives much glove use, and some workers yank off the gloves when a specific worry fades. About 10% of mail workers now wear protective gloves, the postal service estimates. That's a far cry from the 60% who donned gloves at the peak of anthrax fear late last year.

Carroll Hyman has stopped wearing them. At least for now.

Hyman has been a postal clerk for 29 years. He sorts mail at the Merrifield post office in Northern Virginia. He handles about 3,000 pieces of mail every hour.

He has worn cotton gloves for years, but those don't protect against anthrax. So, last November, he started wearing the protective nitrile rubber gloves underneath. But he couldn't stand how much the gloves made his hands sweat. So he stopped wearing them.

"If I'm supposed to get anthrax, I suppose that's God's will," he says. But if another anthrax scare comes along, he says, "I'll very quickly put the plastic gloves on again."

It doesn't take anthrax worries to move some workers to make disposable gloves part of their work uniform.

Hairstylist Pino Cisternino wears them all winter long — particularly when he's washing a client's hair. During the winter months, the Highland Park, Ill.-based hairstylist says, his hands often dry out, crack and bleed if he puts them in water. He wears the gloves because he doesn't like attending to clients when he has open wounds.

"When customers ask me why I'm wearing the gloves," he says with a laugh, "I tell them I do rectal exams, too."

As an emergency medical technician volunteer at New York's Central Park Medical Unit, William Mack says he never leaves home without a case snapped on his belt holding two disposable gloves.

As the market for disposable gloves has grown, so has the array of glove choices. As many, it seems, as for toothpaste.

Some come powdered. Some are synthetics that cater to people with latex allergies.

Color is big. Some folks prefer dark blue while others go for green or purple.

But the trendiest options are additives to gloves that make them "good" for you, says Michael Lynch, president of the gloves business at Allegiance Healthcare. Available are: gloves with skin conditioners, vitamin E and aloe.

Only one glovemaker still makes latex gloves in the USA.

For 30 years, in tiny Bedford, N.H., Tillotson Healthcare has made latex gloves. But over the past six years, the company closed two of its three U.S. plants. Its payroll has thinned to 300 workers from 1,300. The problem: high labor costs here vs. its plants in Asia.

Will the company's last U.S. plant be here in five years?

"I can't tell you the answer to that," says CEO Tom Tillotson, whose father founded the company in 1931. "But I can tell you the trend isn't good."

Ten years ago, Best Manufacturing developed synthetic nitrile gloves to serve people with latex allergies. Because the gloves are non-allergenic, the company hopes all safety-conscious workers someday wear them.

"Their use will go as far as people's fears," says Mark Wheeler, director of marketing at Best.

Charlie Mills, CEO of glovemaker Medline Industries, envisions employees who handle lots of cash — such as grocery cashiers — as regular users of his gloves someday.

Perhaps no one has better disposable-glove lore than David Gust.

He owns High Five Products, a maker of latex and synthetic gloves. Several years ago at a trade show, a man approached Gust and asked many questions before buying a box. The man said he needed the gloves to make something.

As the customer walked off, Gust asked him what he planned to make with the latex gloves.

Without missing a beat, the customer reached into his pocket and removed a duck caller.

And blew.