Comment by creesch
1 day ago
Good news with a note:
> That’s not to say that there is no microplastics pollution, the U-M researchers are quick to say. > > “We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none. There’s still a lot out there, and that’s the problem,”
And with some actual numbers, when digging in further:
> They found that on average, the gloves imparted about 2,000 false positives per millimeter squared area.
> Clough prepared the substrates while wearing nitrile gloves, which is recommended by the guidance of literature in the microplastics field. But when she examined the substrates to estimate how many microplastics she captured, the results were many thousands of times greater than what she expected to find.
The reason this is important is that one flawed dataset reports a hopeless situation; the other at least provides a “if we stop now” message.