Earth’s worrying pall of microplastics—recorded by scientists practically everywhere, across our planet’s oceans, aloft in clouds above Mount Fuji, burrowed into human brains, and even in the testicles of our poor damn dogs—might be modestly less apocalyptic than previously thought.
Researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) have identified a surprising and arguably mildly embarrassing error that might be contributing to dramatic overestimates of microplastics content across multiple studies: flecks of debris shed by the standard latex and nitrile gloves that scientists typically use in the lab. Tiny soap-like salts, called stearates, coat these gloves as remnants of the manufacturing process, according to the new U-M study, where they can rub off, creating thousands of false positives per square millimeter (or about one-thousandth of a square inch).
The U-M team replicated a common test surface for microplastics work to evaluate how seven different types of disposable lab gloves could muddy the final microplastics count in each case.
“The type of contact we tried to mimic touches upon all varieties of microplastics research,” according to a statement from the study’s lead author Madeline Clough, a recent doctoral graduate at U-M. “If you are contacting a sample with a gloved hand,” Clough said, “you’re likely imparting these stearates that could overestimate your results.”
Hellbound and Down 