Protective gloves and masks have become an integral part of the everyday wardrobe of people around the world.
While in some countries it is impossible to imagine going outside without them, in others it is not rare to meet people who do not wear masks or gloves.
Opinions are divided among both experts and politicians regarding the necessity of wearing masks and gloves.
Apart from the faces and hands of passers-by, it is not uncommon to come across protective equipment on the sidewalk, see it in the grass, next to containers…
The image of improperly disposed masks and gloves is not unique to a large number of countries, and photographer Dan Giannapolus went through the streets of London and made a gallery of protective equipment thrown everywhere, just not where it should be.
How to dispose of used mask and gloves?
Protective equipment – masks and gloves – should first be properly removed from the face and hands.
A person is at greater risk if they handle a mask and gloves incorrectly than if they do not wear them. Scientists explain that it is important to touch the mask only by the elastic band that attaches it to the ears or the straps that attach it to the back of the head.
The protective part of the mask should never be touched, because that way there is a possibility of transferring the virus from it to your hands, and then further.
Gloves should not be removed by grasping the fingers and pulling, but should be grasped above the wrist and pulled so that they fall over, and then disposed of in the waste.
Masks and gloves should ideally be disposed of with sanitary waste, but it is important to separate them from other waste. They should be placed in a bag, and the bag should be tied before being thrown into the container, so as not to endanger city sanitation workers.
Those who empty containers and bins and clean the streets every day are the ones most at risk from improper disposal of this type of medical waste.
Photographer Den Dianaboutgenderins explains what made him start painting used plastic gloves he’s come across on the streets since the coronavirus pandemic affected and Bigin Britainin.
As everywhere, the corona virus pandemic has a huge impact on life as we know it so far .
I was thinking. how do I document these surreal times ?
After a few days at home early last week, I decided to go for a short walk and was surprised at the number of used gloves and face masks on the street in my neighborhood in a small suburb of Nottingham.
I started photographing them during the thirty minute walk. These disposable gloves quickly demonstrated the scale of the public health crisis.
Artifacts of the paranoia and panic that people feel under the immense pressure of an invisible killer.
For me, the gloves show how infectious we ourselves are to the environment.
If we start from this small sample, then all over the country there are hundreds of thousands of gloves scattered in empty public spaces .
I found gloves in gutters, sticking out of bushes and buckets, on manholes and wire fences. I couldn’t walk more than a few meters without running into one.
For the next four days I continued to go out for my permitted daily exercise and peeked around the neighborhood again, each time going to different parts.
Within a radius of about a kilometer and a half, I found about 300 discarded gloves and masks.
A few years ago I had a similar project photographing discarded drug bags in South London. Over the course of the three-year project, I photographed just over 400 bags.
I have now found more than three-quarters of that number in four days.
This is an obvious continuation of some of the themes I explored in an earlier project, but in the context of a terrifying global health crisis. This small sample from a neighborhood points to the unprecedented level of fear we live in and the profound irony of the disruption of nature.
