I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.
And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.
So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.
The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.
Thank God someone bothered to check.
>I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.
Sources beyond dude just trust me, for the skeptics.
Scientists may have been unknowingly inflating microplastics pollution estimates, and the surprising source could be their own lab gloves. A
https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/scientists-lab-gloves-may-be-causing-an-overestimation-of-microplastics-411138
Nitrile and latex gloves that scientists wear while they are measuring microplastics may lead to a potential overestimation of the tiny poll
Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics - Phys.org (it’s a pdf)
Researchers discovered a standard piece of lab equipment has added thousands of microplastic ‘false positives’ per each square-millimeter un
Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data: That doesn’t mean microplastics aren’t a problem, though
That should be enough
This is a "technically true but also misleading" type of post.
The links above are all referring to the same University of Michigan study. The scientists from that study underline over and over again that microplastics are still very much a problem. This is more about technical precision than "oh wow we totally overreacted and microplastics are not a problem." They are very much a problem and the scientists say so. This is important work but does not erase the problem.
The graphic at the top was not created by the scientists who published the study. It was seemingly created by a random Twitter user, I wouldn't be surprised if with AI. The big jump on the graph gives a certain impression, but even if the numbers are accurate it gives a misleading impression.
"Stupid scientists didn't even think to check" is a bad genre of post that doesn't actually help.
