Classic. This is like that female serial killer in Europe that turned out to actually just be DNA from a woman making the DNA collection swabs.
Plot twist: the woman making the DNA collection swabs was the serial killer.
It's the perfect cover!
Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
71–80 of 282 posts
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do your own assessment. Yeah, and my primitive home-grown analysis then carries the same weight as those from experts with professional equipment? Oh come on...
Doesn't have to be one or the other. Trust, but verify? Experts make mistakes, professional equipment can be mishandled. Don't take anybodies word, look at the evidence for yourself. This is a very scientific way of thinking. It's only gotten a bad rap on account of people using it to attack others' research and then(crucially) failing to perform their own.
> Don't take anybodies word, look at the evidence for yourself.
Please nobody listen to his person. There is nothing scientific about ignoring the experts to instead behold the opinions of the uninformed.
The world is too large, too complex, and too nuanced for the layman's opinion to be worth much. When someone is unqualified treat their opinion as equal to every other unqualified persons opinion. Include your own in that assessment. Be honest, what qualifications do you have that make your assessment of the evidence more valid than any other random street person's in the given field? It's very likely the answer is "none". So lend your own opinion the level of respect it has earned. Be honest with yourself about what that level is.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems to be the Casefile episode about the "Phantom of Heilbronn" https://casefilepodcast.com/case-178-the-woman-without-a-fac...
That's incredible. Though the effect of this will be claims that microplastics don't exist while no one in that case claimed that murders didn't happen. Happy to have learned about an interesting historical oddity either way.
I don't think anyone will claim microplastics don't exist, but people will definitely be skeptical of articles about how many there, and where they're found.
At worst, I'd expect to see people disregarding the threat, not disregarding the presence of the microplastics themselves.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, trust but verify and start questioning things. Science is now more politicized more than ever by politicians. COVID vaccines are not even tested. I didn't said this. Pfizer and Moderna CEO said this in EU parliament hearing.
Lol, the COVID vaccines went through some of the largest randomized controlled trials ever conducted and had some of the best safety and efficacy results ever seen. You might have heard that it wasn't tested for reducing transmission, i.e. whether the vaccines make it less likely that an infected, vaccinated person would transmit the virus to someone else... Which it wasn't, because uhhh... how would you? They tested…
A man who represents himself as a lawyer has a fool for a client. A man who "does his own research" has a fool for a researcher.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#75So you're saying microplastics aren't a problem, because there's too much microplastics in gloves??
I don't see anyone saying they aren't a problem.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#76Classic. This is like that female serial killer in Europe that turned out to actually just be DNA from a woman making the DNA collection swabs.
That’s why you’re supposed to submit an unused swab with the samples, so that they can make sure the swab itself isn’t the source.
That only works if both swabs suffered the same contamination. If the contamination is sporadic, then it won't show.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#77I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Many years ago, in the final year of my Biology degree, I did a paid summer internship at an Evolutionary Biology lab here in Spain, assisting in a project where they were researching relationships between metal ion accumulation (mostly zinc) and certain SNPs (≈"gene varieties"). A lot of my work was in slicing tiny fragments of deep-frozen human livers and kidneys in a bios…
> I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account!
Agreed. While I didn’t anticipate this myself, nor would have likely figured it out myself, I also don’t expect my claims to influence global policy.
The scientists who failed to realize this do expect that, so the standards we expect from them need to be higher in accordance with that.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still not aware of any reason to worry about micro plastics. As far as I know they seem harmless?
I think any time a new material starts to meaningfully accumulate in our bodies, our food sources, our oceans, etc, we should at least go with caution. The default stance should be caution, not fearlessness.
>fearlessness
More like flippancy, even hubris.
The approach you advocate is essentially the EU's precautionary principle. [1]
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/the-preca...
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It says similar. “ Stearates are salts, or soap-like particles. Manufacturers coat disposable gloves with stearates to make them easier to peel from the molds used to form them. But stearates are also chemically very similar to some microplastics, according to the researchers, and can lead to false positives when researchers are looking for microplastic pollution.” Stearates aren’t microplastics. Maybe we need to be…
I'm still not aware of any reason to worry about micro plastics. As far as I know they seem harmless?
Many negative health effects have been associated with microplastics and related chemicals. Not sure if there's yet anything causative, but I think it's probably a matter of time and there's lots of research to be done. I'd bet the health effect of microplastics (or anything that human body isn't used to) is more likely to be negative than not.
Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics
#80Called it! > To be honest, after reading some of these microplastics papers I'm starting to suspect most of them are bullshit. Plastics are everywhere in a modern lab and rarely do these papers have proper controls, which I suspect would show that there is a baseline level of microplastic contamination in labs that is unavoidable. Petri dishes, pipettes, microplates, EVERYTHING is plastic, packaged in plastic, and cl…
> Plastics are everywhere in a modern lab and rarely do these papers have proper controls, which I suspect would show that there is a baseline level of microplastic contamination in labs that is unavoidable. Petri dishes, pipettes, microplates, EVERYTHING is plastic, packaged in plastic, and cleaned using plastic tools, all by people wearing tons of synthetic fibers.
Maybe so, but plastics are also everywhere in our daily lives, including on the food we eat and in the clothes we wear. As we speak I just took some eggs out of a plastic carton, unwrapped some cheese from plastic wrap, and got oatmeal out of a plastic bag. The socks and pants I'm wearing are made of polyester.
If plastics cause contamination in a lab, would you not also expect similar contamination outside of the lab?