Discussion

Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data

Kikawala: Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561711

culi: The fact that there's so much microplastics everywhere that it's hard for us to even study tissue in isolate is already not encouraging.Also the main finding of concern imo in the original Nature paper wasn't the finding that we have a plastic fork-worth of microplastics in our brains. It's the finding that brain tissue seems to concentrate microplastics at a much higher rate than other tissue in the bodyI find it concerning that there seems to be such a concerted effort to downplay the significance of that finding

cryzinger: In this case, the lab gloves are shedding materials that superficially resemble microplastics under a microscope but aren't actually microplastics. (I was concerned about that at first too because of the overlap between food service gloves and lab gloves!)

b112: I don't buy the whole premise.A couple of months ago there were a bunch of news stories, about how maybe oil companies should be sued, just like tobacco companies were.Then, suddenly out of nowhere, it's actually the gloves that is the problem. It's an excellent counter to such a movement. The scientists are wrong, you see. Microplastics? Overblown!The average joe will read only the headline/clickbait, and forever doubt microplastics.

ggm: I had strong echoes of a naieve lab experience in the 1970s: testing for organophosphates in seawater at the Forth Estuary was basically impossible except for gross amounts, because the standard analytical glass washing we used contaminated the glassware. You have to maintain a completely independent suite of glassware from pipettes all the way through to reaction vessels, and chromatography cells, and wash them with chromic acid, or special formulations.(I don't work in this field any more, I was a lowly bottle washer and lab tech on a job creation scheme, I am sure the field has moved forward)