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Avi Roy on X: "7,000 false positives per square millimeter. The culprit was the lab gloves. University of Michigan researchers just upended a core assumption in microplastics science. Latex and nitrile gloves, worn by the scientists doing the measuring, shed stearate particles that look https://t.co/kJqmWzCZ9o" / X

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To view keyboard shortcuts, press question mark View keyboard shortcuts Home Explore 1 Notifications Grok Premium Bookmarks Creator Studio Articles Profile More Post Alexey Guzey @alexeyguzey Post See new posts Conversation Avi Roy @agingroy 7,000 false positives per square millimeter. The culprit was the lab gloves. University of Michigan researchers just upended a core assumption in microplastics science. Latex and nitrile gloves, worn by the scientists doing the measuring, shed stearate particles that look chemically identical to polyethylene. Standard infrared and Raman instruments can't tell them apart. The gloves were counting as plastic. Seven glove types tested. All contaminated. The cheapest fix: switch to cleanroom gloves, which dropped false positives to around 100 per mm² vs. 7,000. The "credit card per week" headline (5 grams, WWF/Newcastle 2019) has separate problems. A 2022 re-analysis found severe methodological errors in the original estimate. Actual measured intake

@agingroy: 7,000 false positives per square millimeter. The culprit was the lab gloves. University of Michigan researchers just upended a core assumption in microplastics science. Latex and nitrile gloves, worn by the scientists doing the measuring, shed stearate particles that look chemically identical to polyethylene. Standard infrared and Raman instruments can't tell them apart. The gloves were counting as plastic. Seven glove types tested. All contaminated. The cheapest fix: switch to cleanroom gloves, which dropped false positives to around 100 per mm² vs. 7,000. The "credit card per w

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