Sue Lockwood, 51, was a surgical nurse and said she wore hundreds of latex gloves each week at the hospital where she worked. She had no history of allergies, but around 1990, she began having contact dermatitis and asthmalike symptoms. Her eyes would swell, and she would get hives. Soon after, her new allergy took a bad turn.
"I had an anaphylactic reaction, and there was nothing I was doing different," Lockwood said. "My body just could not take on any more protein."
Lockwood's latex allergy became so serious that she soon had to file for disability and Social Security, leaving her work in the medical world behind.
"It was a devastating nightmare, to start. It was unbelievable," said Lockwood, who is now co-director at the Milwaukee, Wis.-based American Latex Allergy Association, an organization she founded. "It took my whole life and turned it upside down."
Zucker-Pinchoff, who's allergy developed around the same time as Lockwood's due to her constant contact with latex proteins in hospitals, also left her career as an anesthesiologist at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center.
"It was not only unsafe for me, this was unsafe for my patients," Zucker-Pinchoff said.
The rise in latex allergies, awareness and research began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, around the same time as awareness of the AIDS epidemic. Many in the health, food and other public service industries began to snap on latex gloves to protect themselves from the HIV virus. Manufacturers responded with quick production of more gloves that were cheaper.
But latex gloves pose more threat to those with latex allergies than other products, not only because of their composition but because of the powder used to make it easier to put the gloves on.
"On the whole, latex doesn't jump out and attack you," Zucker-Pinchoff said. Instead, the powder can bind latex protens, which then get aerosolized, making it easier for someone with an allergy to come in contact with or breathe in the latex.
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