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Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

460 points by giuliomagnifico

by Mordisquitos

3 subcomments

I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Many years ago, in the final year of my Biology degree, I did a paid summer internship at an Evolutionary Biology lab here in Spain, assisting in a project where they were researching relationships between metal ion accumulation (mostly zinc) and certain SNPs (≈"gene varieties"). A lot of my work was in slicing tiny fragments of deep-frozen human livers and kidneys in a biosafety cabinet over dry ice.
The reason I bring this up is because the researchers had taken the essential precaution of providing me with a ceramic knife to do the cutting (and platic pliers), to eliminate the risk of contaminating the samples with metal from ordinary cutting implements.
That some research on microplatics did not take into account the absolutely mental amount of single-use plastic that is involved in biological research, particularly gloves of all things, boggles the mind.

by giantg2

6 subcomments

Classic. This is like that female serial killer in Europe that turned out to actually just be DNA from a woman making the DNA collection swabs.

by EPWN3D

8 subcomments

The various "OMG MICROPLASTICS" studies always smacked of alarmism. No one has actually identified tangible harms from microplastics; it's just taken as a given that they are bad. So this fueled a bunch of studies that tried to find them everywhere. Even the authors of this study go to great pains to not challenge the dogma that microplastics are existentially terrifying. So I fully expect we'll still be panicking over vague, undefined harm whenever we find microplastics somewhere.
This type of research requires very little creativity or study design -- just throw a dart in a room and try and find microplastics in whatever it lands on. Boom, you get a grant for your study, and journalists will cover your result because it gets clicks. Whenever this type of incentive exists, we should be very skeptical of a rapidly-emerging consensus.

by s0rce

0 subcomment

I guess with Raman I can see this being misidentified but I do testing with FTIR at my job, although not often for microplastics and we often detect olefins and stearates and they don't seem to get confused. I didn't realize there were stearates on nitrile gloves, we'll need to be more careful of that. We are always weary of protein contamination from people, or cellulose/nylon from clothing.

by zug_zug

1 subcomments

This is good news, probably. We'll have to wait and see which studies replicate and which don't.

by dust42

8 subcomments

So basically the gloves that kitchen staff now must wear means we get an extra dose of micro plastics? Yikes.

by khalic

2 subcomments

This study assumes everybody is oblivious to contamination, and explicitly says they can't differentiate. Not useful and bordering on the tautological

by beloch

2 subcomments

"The researchers used air samplers which are fitted with a metal substrate. Air passes through the sampler, and particles from the atmosphere deposit onto the substrate. Then, using light-based spectroscopy, the researchers are able to determine what kind of particles are found on the substrate.
Clough prepared the substrates while wearing nitrile gloves, which is recommended by the guidance of literature in the microplastics field. But when she examined the substrates to estimate how many microplastics she captured, the results were many thousands of times greater than what she expected to find."
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The very first thing that should have been done is to run results for a substrate that hadn't been placed in the sampler. You need to know what a zero result looks like just to characterize your setup. You'd also want to run samples with known and controlled micro-plastic concentrations. Why didn't they do this? Their results are utterly meaningless if they didn't.

by legitster

0 subcomment

I had always assumed there was a methodological failure that kept getting replicated. There were enough articles like "scientists find microplastics at bottom of peat bog" that really made me dubious of the claims.
"Strong claims require strong evidence". Somehow it happens pretty regularly in academia that only one method becomes acceptable and any conflicting results get herded out on technical grounds.

by bluerooibos

0 subcomment

They found microplastics in the snow in Antarctica and in human embryos right? So this seems rather redundant.

by keeperofdakeys

1 subcomments

Reminds me of the story of Polywater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater

by AndrewKemendo

0 subcomment

The way this study was done makes perfect sense for finding this cross-contamination issue, but does not actually address how microplastics samples are extracted and found in sampling studies.
The below meta-study largely discusses sampling methods and protection from cross contamination so everyone here acting like this one study’s somehow invalidates decades of quality research:
>Due to the wide contamination of the environment with microplastics, including air [29], measures should be taken during sampling to reduce the contamination with these particles and fibers. The five rules to reduce cross-contamination of microplastic samples are: (1) using glass and metal equipment instead of plastics, which can introduce contamination; (2) avoiding the use of synthetic textiles during sampling or sample handling, preferring the use of 100% cotton lab coat; (3) cleaning the surfaces with 70% ethanol and paper towels, washing the equipment with acid followed by ultrapure water, using consumables directly from packaging and filtering all working solutions; (4) using open petri dishes, procedural blanks and replicates to control for airborne contamination; (5) keeping samples covered as much as possible and handling them in clean rooms with controlled air circulation, limited access (e.g. doors and windows closed) and limited circulation, preferentially in a fume hood or algae-culturing unit, or by covering the equipment during handling [15], [26], [95], [105], [107]. A fume hood can reduce 50% of the contamination [105] while covering samples during filtration, digestion and visual identification can reduce more than 90% of contamination [95].
So don’t ghost ride the whip about the death of the microplastic plague just yet.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016599361...

by ktokarev

0 subcomment

the_plastic_detox documentary on netflix promotes the idea that microplastics cause infertility. this is based on 6 couples 90 days experiment.
they tracked levels of plastic-related chemicals and fertility markers. after plastic detox 3 out of 6 couples got pregnant.
the whole research process methodology, not just measurement, miss critical assessment

by ErigmolCt

1 subcomments

So the takeaway is: we've been accidentally adding "microplastics" with the very gloves we use to avoid contamination. That's almost poetic

by inglor_cz

1 subcomments

While we are used to associate "the observer effect" with particle physics, it can appear in biology and/or chemistry as well.
Keeping things meticulously clean on the microscopic level is a complicated task. One of the many reasons why so few EUV chip fabs even exist.

by fHr

0 subcomment

Didnt they use for newest studies to detect microplastic in placentas I think only non plastic omitting alternative gloves and material. Can't recall there it was specifically mentioned in a worldclass ARTE docu about microplastics maybe some ARTE Ultras here can recall.

by BoredPositron

0 subcomment

ITT people that only read the headline.

by thomasgeelens

1 subcomments

this feels like such a weird oversight in such a controlled environment: "oh my bad it was the gloves!" I wonder in how many other studies this happened?

by johnbarron

1 subcomments

A rediscovery...six years later:
"When Good Intentions Go Bad — False Positive Microplastic Detection Caused by Disposable Gloves" - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03742
From the study in the OP you cannot derive that current studies on microplastics are not valid. The headline framing that scientists have been measuring their own gloves, is science journalism doing what it does best...
Stearates are water soluble soaps, so any study using standard wet chemistry extraction, and that is most of them, washes them away before analysis even begins. Stearates also cant mimic polystyrene, PET, PVC, nylon, or any of the dozens of other polymers routinely found in environmental and human tissue samples.
Nothing to see here.

by throwup238

4 subcomments

Called it!
> To be honest, after reading some of these microplastics papers I'm starting to suspect most of them are bullshit. Plastics are everywhere in a modern lab and rarely do these papers have proper controls, which I suspect would show that there is a baseline level of microplastic contamination in labs that is unavoidable. Petri dishes, pipettes, microplates, EVERYTHING is plastic, packaged in plastic, and cleaned using plastic tools, all by people wearing tons of synthetic fibers.
> We went through this same nonsense when genetic sequencers first became available until people got it into their heads that DNA contamination was everywhere and that we had to be really careful with sample collection and statistical methods. [1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40681390

by nobodyandproud

1 subcomments

Finally some good news.

by maltyxxx

0 subcomment

[dead]

by krautburglar

1 subcomments

[flagged]

by nslsm

1 subcomments

[flagged]

by isodev

3 subcomments

[flagged]

by darkerside

6 subcomments

So the problem is these particles are literally flying off the gloves of the scientists wearing them to the point it's interfering with the experiment and so... it's less of a problem?

by lokinork

0 subcomment

As per usual, they get the result then go back to do the study. Been happening in economics forever too.

by tasuki

2 subcomments

So you're saying microplastics aren't a problem, because there's too much microplastics in gloves??

by wewewedxfgdf

1 subcomments

That's a relief. Now I can stop worrying about microplastics. Just like the environment - we don't hear much about it any more, so they must have sorted that out too. Didn't they? Did they?

by globemaster99

5 subcomments

Carl Sagan was right all along. Always question science, never trust these so called experts, do your own assessment, research and thinking. This must be another global climate change scam.