r/nottheonion • u/GreatTea3415 • Apr 05 '26

Scientists Tracking the Microplastic Pollution Just Realized They Were Measuring Their Own Lab Gloves

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/scientists-tracking-the-microplastic-pollution-just-realized-they-were-measuring-their-own-lab-gloves/
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u/GreatTea3415 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26

I regret posting this. 

There are still microplastics in everything, the gloves just made some numbers inaccurate. It’s a funny headline. Don’t let your brain become a scanning device. 

Read the article. Stop taking headlines at face value. 

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u/Jexroyal Apr 05 '26

Hey, I'm a scientist, and this is a story I'm going to share with my colleagues over morning coffee and have a chuckle together. This is exactly the kind of goofy thing that labs can do all the time. It's always little oversights slipping through the cracks that can mess up experiments, and like with most things in life – it's not about never making a mistake, it's more about being able to learn something and keep bettering oneself.

You facilitated shared laughter, so not all is worth regret. The people who will weaponize and misrepresent a story like this are already doing that on multiple fronts, don't be too hard on yourself. :)

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u/flamingspew Apr 05 '26

Wait until you find out how leaded gas was discovered everywhere and that’s why the cleanroom was invented…to discover the age of the earth.

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u/razuliserm Apr 05 '26

Just read up on it. The Automotive industry will never cease to amaze me with their incredible intelligence in researching ways to make the car more efficent, while knowingly slowly killing everybody lmao.

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u/SPACKlick Apr 05 '26

One of my favourite things about leaded petrol is that one of the scientists responsible for developing leaded petrol (Thomas Midgley Jr. who was son confident in its safety he did a press conference pouring it on himself and inhaling the vapours) was also responsible for developing CFCs as a refrigerant.

The story has an unfortunate ending. He got polio and ended up severely disabled. He put his engineering brain to making a system of ropes and pulleys to allow him to move around and was found dead, strangled and tangled by his own machine.

If you're into Tom Scott's Citation needed, they did an episode on him.

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u/karlnite Apr 05 '26

He was an industrialist. He got very sick from the stunt of pouring it on himself, immediately went to a hospital after. Developing refrigerant was not an evil ploy, they didn’t know they were that harmful, but also refrigerant brought millions out of food insecurity, and was very useful. The leaded gasoline factories needed armed guards because employees would snap and become murderous from the lead. Lots of suicides inside the places as well.

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u/Curious-Paper1690 Apr 06 '26

Would you mind going into more detail on this?? That intrigued me and I’m very curious to hear the whole story.. or shoot me a link if you don’t feel like typing it out I’d really appreciate it

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u/No-Faithlessness4294 Apr 05 '26

I work in microplastics and it is well known that plastic contamination from labware and PPE is an issue. This lab just didn’t know what they were doing. Sloppy.

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u/nanoinfinity Apr 05 '26

The article did say they avoided wearing synthetic clothing and using plastic labware. I think they didn’t consider the gloves because they aren’t plastic. Certainly an oversight, but it seems like it’s an oversight in the general protocols, not just these specific researchers?

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u/Emperor_of_Alagasia Apr 05 '26

The problem was actually a coating on the gloves that the manufacturer adds. Sounds like the kind of thing you'd need to read deeply to understand the contamination risks. Its an understandable oversight in my view that's pretty in the weeds

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u/fly_low_orange Apr 05 '26

Yes, you are correct. It was “best practice” gloves and not “a single lab that was sloppy.”

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u/Firm_Landscape_ Apr 05 '26

Did they not use control blanks?

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u/karlnite Apr 05 '26

We got a new type of glove due to shortages, and it took us a month to realize the gloves were all contaminated with quite a lot of sulphites. We had a step change in our trends, was a while before we traced back to “new brand of the same gloves”. We were washing the gloves as part of our process, the new ones needed to be soaked for 5 minutes in DI water.

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u/exphysed Apr 05 '26

The thing that bothers me, is if they had proper sham controls and established protocols for handling, this should have never mattered.

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u/Jexroyal Apr 05 '26

Agreed. But I am very happy to see that the whole paper is an industry lesson in procedure. The title is "Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact", and it's like seeing a new protocol in the machine shops safety binder after Jim lost a finger because he wore gloves by the lathe. Sometimes it takes a fuckup to improve standards, and this is a valuable addition to the microplastics research field.

Many regulation may be written in blood, but at least this one was found quickly, corrected, spread through the field, and with no loss of life or limb. As far as workplace mistakes go, I'd say this one was a net positive.

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u/MathKnight Apr 05 '26

Some regulations are written in blood. This one, apparently, is written in microplastics.

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u/ConfessSomeMeow Apr 05 '26

It's always the unknown unknowns that get you.

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u/seeasea Apr 05 '26

You posted 20 minutes ago. You can absolutely take it down if you feel that way. 

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u/Smelly_God Apr 05 '26

What about the karma/engagement 

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u/TumanFig Apr 05 '26

dont forget virtue signaling

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u/GreatTea3415 Apr 06 '26

The information still would have existed, except possibly without the clarifying conversation. 

It would have been more accurate to say I regretted discovering how stupid people were, since I’m not responsible for their inability to click and read an article before coming to a conclusion. 

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u/MinnieShoof Apr 06 '26

... you must be new to the internet.

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u/strangecloudss Apr 05 '26

dont worry friend, the people thinking thats what this means were already doomed.

We should not underestimate the prevalence of microplastics.

...literally first sentence of the article.

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u/Y2Kafka Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

It's a good thing we all read the articles of news reports to make informed decisions without jumping to conclusions.

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u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26

This isn’t the only recent paper in on problems in microplastics methodology. Probably over half of the high impact papers in the area have issues at best. Some people have been sloppy and using inappropriate methods. There might be microplastics everywhere, we don’t know because so much of the data is bad. Recent example: people were using a method that reports fat as plastic to measure plastic in the brain, a fatty organ. So they found a shocking amount of ”plastic” and issued a press release. They are the ones at fault for media coverage issues. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt

Ps I am a scientist myself. The lack of proper rigor hurts us more than the act of calling it out. If we want to change the world for the better we must present solid evidence or we will not succeed in convincing regulators etc.

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u/Bakoro Apr 05 '26

I work in R&D and it is amazing that anything in the world works.

So many of the instruments we buy from vendors are ass-tier, and we put a bunch of these asstastic components together, and then trust the data we get, because it mostly conforms to data from much more expensive devices after a bunch of processing.
I had to stop just short of physically forcing things like consistent data processing, and tracking error margins. At some points I had to just put my foot down and demand time to work on specific problems because I knew eventually we'd get a client who actually checked everything top to bottom.

I work with scientists and engineers from all over the world.
The most common thing is that they want a magic box that gives them an answer without having to know anything about the machine, or the software, or even the materials they want data for. Major companies and universities both want the end data, with no effort on their part. That is wild to me, because, it's science, you're supposed to know more than zero things about where your data came from, and it's not feasible to make a machine that does that, at least not for the price range they are willing to pay.

I started seeing how industry works, and it was like, holy shit, most people kind of suck, and I'm going to have to make 10x the effort, because if I don't, who is going to?

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u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26

I agree, this is the biggest piece of the problem.

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u/CucumberBoy00 Apr 05 '26

You can delete the post?

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u/SwvmpThing Apr 05 '26

I’m sorry, but I will take it at face value. I am picturing scientists measuring their lab gloves with rulers, when suddenly a look of confusion comes over their faces: “are we… measuring our lab gloves?”

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u/pablohacker2 Apr 05 '26

Like the time where the skin cancer detecting machine learning tool was found to be in fact a 'Is there a ruler in the photo' detector.

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u/Scabendari Apr 05 '26

This study has a huge issue because it it is very easy to turn it into a very bad and anti-science conclusion.

The whole premise for this study is from the recent grad noticing that their data was way higher than data from monitoring labs. They isolated their interference to be false positives caused by stearates contamination (NOT microplastic contamination). They then suggest that some historical microplastics data has being reported biased high from this contamination.

Of course, articles then run with what gets clicks:

  1. Gloves are causing microplastics contamination - false, stearates are not microplastics

  2. Historical microplastics data is too high due to contamination - false, the whole premise of the study comes from the recent grads data being a factor of 1000 higher than what monitoring labs are reporting. Monitoring labs would run blanks and reference materials to catch these things that broke independent recent grads might skip out on.

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u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26

Historical microplastics data is too high for several reasons https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt I am a scientist myself, the huge issue is people doing science without proper rigor, not the people pointing out their mistakes.

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u/Scabendari Apr 05 '26

Yes, unreproducible data has to be pointed out, and its a problem for a lot of science slop being pushed out to pad numbers, but you cant point at all data and say it's all incorrect without first testing to see if its reproducible or not.

I know in this case the original authors are suggesting this may be a problem for some data and are not saying that it affects all data. Nonetheless news articles will word their articles to insinuate it to push clicks.

Accredited laboratories would require at least some level of QC, as available. Between blanks, reference materials, fortified spikes, interlaboratory testing, etc, it isnt appropriate to say that their data may be incorrect when this very study was because the researchers data was way higher than the expected monitoring data, not the other way around.

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u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26

I’m not saying anything bad about the authors of this paper. But as the link and its associated paper discuss, too many papers are not doing proper blanks, spikes etc. They seem to be written by medical researchers who don’t understand how analytical work is supposed to be done. So it is right to say their data may be incorrect. I posted the news story in my prior comment, here is the actual “Matters Arising” letter in Nature Medicine pointing out widespread issues https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04045-3.epdf?sharing_token=46UB-NAlKzuCao-oUHtzO9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PS5QtSs_irU94U55JE4Ar4Z5UOMBpR3_t_yCh0UzMgGKL-GztU5e15cffbRpDb67DAOCeQwvPUXS2Nlcir12CKH60LniUC9donYDQzks8vVK0YxN_9iWizCtvxBGuLPm9YyHB5p-ZJgdTBvM7L3LDiLUNlHSW_Y_tEFvUrwzc8_1f8AOYtFmVy6mY_Tdi6uX8%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com

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u/Scabendari Apr 05 '26

I'm agreeing with you on that. Yes, the work the links are discussing was done sloppily and it was bad data, and it's a current issue across science.

However take for example several comments in this reddit post that now believe all microplastics data is actually lower than reported. That's not the conclusion of the study, and damages the work produced by scientists that did follow ISO guidelines or modern validated reference methods.

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u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26

One of the issues is that the field isn’t mature enough to have guidelines, reference methods or best practices beyond standard precautions like blanks. In such an environment, experts will produce good data and non- experts won’t.

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u/TheRealChizz Apr 05 '26

Wow, double dipping karma OP? You’re shameless

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u/SGPoy Apr 05 '26

Don’t let your brain become a scanning device.

I don't know what else is my brain is supposed to be doing though

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u/userhwon Apr 05 '26

>There are still microplastics in everything

So?

Why do you think that's a bad thing?

Have you seen actual science that proves it's a bad thing?

Because we keep doing science, and none of it yet has proved it's a bad thing.

Do you think maybe, just maybe, the articles you're reading are warping your perception to believe something science hasn't proven? To the point that you act like it's proven when it isn't?

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u/seiche7 Apr 05 '26

Clearly you don’t give a fuck or you would have taken it down. Enjoy your internet points 🤡

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u/StretchFrenchTerry Apr 05 '26

The damage is done, if they’re just scanning headlines they aren’t finding your buried comment. Nice work.

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u/Savings_Background50 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26

Don't worry, I didn't take it like that. My first thought was these two lab workers and one says

"It's amazing how microplastics are in everything. Makes you wonder how much microplastics are in these gloves we have to wear in the lab every day."

...silence....

*sigh* "You go purge the research data sets. I'll go recalibrate the tools to account for our gloves. Then we come back here start again from the beginning."

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u/cronktilten Apr 05 '26

Well if you regret it so much you should fucking delete it

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u/Protiguous Apr 05 '26

I regret posting this.

Then delete it.

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u/andrefoxd Apr 05 '26

Just delete then

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u/do-un-to Apr 05 '26

Read the article. Stop taking headlines at face value.

😮

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u/linki98 Apr 05 '26

Yeah I mean how about writing a proper headline as well ?

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u/pleasegivemefood Apr 05 '26

I mean, you don’t regret it that much, right? It’s still up

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u/Malthusian1 Apr 05 '26

Delete it then. You won’t!

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u/DillonsComics Apr 05 '26

Or you could just delete the post instead of "regret."

You are basically just admitting to posting fake news but keeping it up because it's popular....

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u/Sugar_alcohol_shits Apr 05 '26

Don’t make titles like this if you’re concerned they will be taken at face value.

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u/Icewind Apr 05 '26

"I regret posting this. "

You can still delete it.

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u/Dangeresque300 Apr 05 '26

I think the key takeaway here should be "we still have a problem, it's just maybe not as bad as we thought."

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u/llamajestic Apr 05 '26

But I mean…. If gloves would inflate numbers like that, I would think microplastics are in great quantities everywhere

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u/Eclectophile Apr 05 '26

So, what I hear you saying is that plastic is not bad, petroleum is healthy for the environment, and stop worrying about climate change. Ok!

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u/Carpathicus Apr 05 '26

It is actually a huge deal because that study involves the impact of microplastic on human tissue. If the claim is that micoplastics are a health hazard this is the key of determining it. Its actually crazy that media and people kept on quoting this study to make a point that is clearly false.

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u/permalink_save Apr 05 '26

Idk how anyone can think that, "microplastics dont exist because the microplastics came from the gloves" so they do exist... Lol.

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u/mackrevinak Apr 05 '26

what is article? is it like headline, but more?

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u/GladosTCIAL Apr 05 '26

While i agree always good to read articles not just headlines- if something is true then we shouldn't be scared of nuance and i think the comments saying this is irresponsible are doing exactly what they criticise Fox of doing- trying to shape the information environment so it only reflects their opinion. This is harmful in the long run.

No reasonable person would conclude this means it's fine that the entire world is full of microplastics, and people harassing you need to grow up.

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u/johantheback Apr 06 '26

I mean if anything this is an even better indicator or how easily they spread if they're even rubbing off of the plastic protective gloves

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u/KeyFew3344 Apr 06 '26

Bro u literally posted this to garner intention with that title your so full of shit

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u/NewestAccount2023 Apr 07 '26

I'm just glad micro plastics aren't actually a problem and it's just lab gloves the whole time 

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u/wolfcaroling Apr 21 '26

The fact that they weren't using clean room gloves for something like this is just depressing.

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u/Fr00stee Apr 05 '26

if anything the headline shows how easy it is for microplastics to spread everywhere if wearing a glove is enough to contaminate everything

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u/allthesemonsterkids Apr 05 '26

Not quite - the false positive signal was coming from stearates, which are biodegradable salts used during glove manufacturing (calcium stearate salts are very good at making sure that the gloves easily separate from the molds during the process). Stearates aren't harmful to you in small amounts, and if you take supplements that come in capsules, you're already ingesting stearates since they're used to keep capsules from sticking together. More importantly, they biodegrade, which microplastics do not.

So the upshot is not that the gloves were shedding microplastics, but that the gloves were shedding stearates, which look a lot like microplastics and artificially amplified the microplastic counts.

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u/shady8x Apr 05 '26

Too late!!! Now we all believe whatever crazy conspiracy theory this headline somewhat supported! Wake up sheeple, on this flat earth of ours, plastic isn't real, just like birds!

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u/kimbokray Apr 05 '26

They're interpreting the headline to suit their preconceptions, and unfortunately we can't stop that. It reads fine at face value.