Scientists Discover Lab Gloves Are Skewing Microplastics Data - Perhaps By A Lot
Good News Network • • science
Key Points:
- University of Michigan researcher Madeline Clough discovered that latex and nitrile lab gloves can contaminate equipment used to measure microplastics, causing inflated pollution estimates due to residue called stearates on the gloves.
- Stearates, used as a coating on disposable gloves, are chemically and visually similar to microplastics, leading to roughly 2,000 false positive particles per square millimeter in samples handled with standard gloves.
- Cleanroom gloves, which lack stearate coatings and reduce contamination, impart far fewer false positives but are significantly more expensive than typical gloves.
- The research team developed methods to distinguish true microplastics from glove-derived stearate contamination, offering a way to reassess and correct previously impacted datasets.
- The study urges microplastic researchers to use cleanroom gloves and adopt precautions to avoid contamination, preventing overestimation of microplastic pollution in environmental studies.
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