Wissenschaftler überschätzen möglicherweise die Menge an Mikroplastik in der Umwelt aufgrund einer versehentlichen Kontamination durch Laborhandschuhe, die Stearatsalze freisetzen, die strukturell Polyethylen ähneln und mit Standardschwingungsspektroskopie nur schwer von Kunststoffen zu unterscheiden sind
https://theconversation.com/scientists-may-be-overestimating-the-amount-of-microplastics-in-the-environment-and-the-culprit-is-lab-gloves-258545
16 Kommentare
From the article:
> We are chemists at the University of Michigan working in a collaborative team. We set out to understand how many microplastics Michiganders were inhaling when outside, and whether that depended on where they lived.
> When preparing our samples, we followed all the standard protocols while conducting our research – we avoided plastic use in the lab, wore nonplastic clothing and even used a specialized chamber to reduce potential contamination from the laboratory air.
> Despite these precautions, we found plastic counts in the air that were over 1,000 times greater than previous reports. We knew these numbers didn’t seem right, so what happened?
Paper in [RSC Analytical Methods](https://doi.org/10.1039/d5ay01801c)
> We found that gloves can contribute over 7,000 particles per square millimeter that are misidentified as microplastics.
How many particles of microplastic are found in a square millimeter on average?
We are an MS lab that was looking at this. Getting the samples to run clean basically involved removal of all PPE as even the lab coat would contaminate it.
Nah, let’s just go with the largest number as a precaution.
This has been a thing with food also. It was a big story that came our during the pandemic about how the only food without microplastics were fried because you don’t really touch it at all. Can only imagine why that study was buried.
Reminds me of the guy that discovered what leaded gasoline was doing to us. He had the hardest time removing lead from the background to get a real measurement of historic lead levels.
I love the absolute confidence in so many things. Like there was a study are you dumb for believing other wise?!? Look at the stats?!? and it’s just like sometimes the study is just done poorly.
Should we be looking at the microplastic exposure of scientists themselves? Or healthcare workers, then?
Don’t this kind of prove there’s still way too much plastic in the world if you can’t even run a test without everything touching plastic
So…should I stop using nitrile gloves when prepping food?
Says the study paid for by the people who sell oil to make plastic. This report feels a lot like the tabacoo industry studies that found no addictive qualities in nicotine.
Or the sugar conglomerate studies that showed no health concerns from high sugar consumption.
Or the oil industry study that found no causal links between CO2 and climate change.
Or the supplement industry funded studies that found links between vaccines and autism.
Shall I go on?
FFS scientists, at this point getting any sort of climate action requires overestimating the effects and results
I’m sure there are more plastics than gloves
Lets not use this as a reason to be OK with dumping plastic. PFAs are in your water, check out the WQA site to learn more
Insane petro-hysteria.
The thing I love about science is that they actually come out and say „hey, we might be wrong“ every once in a while.
The thing I hate about humanity is that a good chunk of them see being incorrect as a black and white concept and then immediately start into an attempt to dismiss the whole thing.
Not that I ever expected much to come of developing any policy for microplastics, but I fear what should be potential good news is going to become a reason to kick the can down the road.