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Comments (106)

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  Mordisquitos
  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.
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  giantg2
  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.
• ErigmolCt
  So the takeaway is: we've been accidentally adding "microplastics" with the very gloves we use to avoid contamination. That's almost poetic
• zug_zug
  This is good news, probably. We'll have to wait and see which studies replicate and which don't.
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  dust42
  So basically the gloves that kitchen staff now must wear means we get an extra dose of micro plastics? Yikes.
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  khalic
  This study assumes everybody is oblivious to contamination, and explicitly says they can't differentiate. Not useful and bordering on the tautological
• keeperofdakeys
  Reminds me of the story of Polywater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater
• johnbarron
  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.0c03742From 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.
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  throwup238
  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
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  nobodyandproud
  Finally some good news.
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  inglor_cz
  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.
• fHr
  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.
• thomasgeelens
  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?
• BoredPositron
  ITT people that only read the headline.
• maltyxxx
  [dead]
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  krautburglar
  [flagged]
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  isodev
  [flagged]
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  darkerside
  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?
• lokinork
  As per usual, they get the result then go back to do the study. Been happening in economics forever too.
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  nslsm
  Trust the science, bigot.
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  tasuki
  So you're saying microplastics aren't a problem, because there's too much microplastics in gloves??
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  wewewedxfgdf
  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?
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  globemaster99
  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.