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A growing contingent of the scientific community has become skeptical about the body of research finding that microplastics have infiltrated almost every aspect of nature, from the remotest regions of Earth to inside our bodies.
As The Guardian reported earlier this year, scientists have started warned that some of these studies may be based on errors due bad methodology, inadequate efforts to limit plastic contamination, and lack of validation.
Now, researchers from the University of Michigan have found that the special coating on commonly used nitrile and latex gloves worn by scientists could be causing measured levels of microplastics to shoot through the roof, even though the coating isn’t technically made of microplastics itself.
As detailed in a recent paper published in the journal Analytical Methods, special substances added to disposable gloves to make them separate from molds more easily, called stearates, are chemically very similar to microplastics, making them almost impossible to distinguish in the lab.
However, the research team led by recent University of Michigan doctoral graduate Madeline Clough stressed that the findings aren’t the last word on the question.
“As microplastic researchers looking for microplastics in the environment, we’re searching for the needle in the haystack, but there really shouldn’t be a needle to begin with,” she said in a statement.
For a preceding project exploring airborne microplastics, Clough used special air samplers to collect environmental samples and analyzed them using light-based spectroscopy. The air samplers themselves feature metal surfaces that collect any chemicals present in the air.
While preparing these metal surfaces, Clough wore nitrile gloves, as is standard practice. But when she analyzed the results, she found the number of microplastics was orders of magnitude higher than she expected, inspiring their latest paper.
“It led to a wild goose chase of trying to figure out where this contamination could possibly have come from, because we just knew this number was far too high to be correct,” she said in the statement. “Throughout the process of figuring it out — was it a plastic squirt bottle, was it particles in the atmosphere of the lab where I was preparing the substrates — we finally traced it down to gloves.”
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