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Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

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Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#151

Post by mapontosevenths »

gus_massa wrote: post #108
mapontosevenths wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But science is about doing your own research! The idea is that science results are based on evidence that is published in serious [1] peer review [2] journals. At some time you realize you can't repeat all the test at home, because it would be full of mice and transgenic plants and a huge particle collider and ... Also, there are a lot of very hard topics. So you must trust the system, but not too much. * Big pharma…

> But science is about doing your own research!

Not for the average adult human on planet Earth, no.

Fifty percent of people are of below average intelligence. Of the 50% that remain only a fraction have access to the equipment necessary to replicate any given experiment, of that fraction only a small percentage will have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to accurately replicate any given experiment, of that tiny fraction only a much tinier fraction will have the KSA's to interpret those results in a meaningful way.

Science should replicate. That does not automatically imply that YOU should be the one replicating it.

For the average person science should mean knowing how to determine if someone is more qualified than they are and listening to them, or at least listening to the general consensus of those who are more qualified when such a consensus exists.

Yes, other peoples goals don't always align perfectly with yours, but the simple truth is that you aren't qualified or even capable of understanding everything in the world. When it comes to those subjects you must be adult enough to understand and work within your limitations.

Honestly, do you really believe that people who sacrificed large parts of their lives to become researchers are in it for the money, or out to get you? These are brilliant people who choose to take a career path that doesn't really pay well. When 99% of them tell you something is safe, Occam will tell that it's a pretty safe bet the weirdos on the fringe are just plain wrong.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#152

Post by refulgentis »

david-gpu wrote: post #150
refulgentis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiritual equivalent of a life sciences forum discovering memory safety, one person who wrote code for a bit saying they wrote a memory bug in C once, then someone clutching pearls about why all programmers irresponsibly write memory unsafe code given it has a global impact. Been here 16 years, it's always an adventure seeing whether stuff like this falls into: A) Polite interest that doesn't turn into self-keyword-a…

> Spiritual equivalent of a life sciences forum discovering memory safety, one person who wrote code for a bit saying they wrote a memory bug in C once, then someone clutching pearls about why programmers irresponsibly write memory unsafe code given it has a global impact. I used to be a code monkey, I wrote systems software at megacorps, and still can't understand why so many programmers irresponsibly write memory u…

That's the analogy working as intended: the answer to "why do programmers still write memory-unsafe code" is the same shape as "why do microplastics researchers still wear gloves." The real answer is boring and full of tradeoffs. The HN thread version skips to indignation: "they never thought of contamination so ipso facto all the research is suspect"

(to go a bit further, in case it's confusing: both you and I agree on "why do people opt-in to memunsafe code in 2026? There’s no reason to" - yet, we also understand why Linux/Android/Windows/macOS/ffmpeg/ls aren't 100% $INSERT_MEM_SAFE_LANGUAGE yet, and in fact, most new written for them is memunsafe)

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#153

Post by Der_Einzige »

idiotsecant wrote: post #109
timr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You found a paper saying that contamination is possible. That doesn’t mean that most of these plastic studies are doing the necessary controls, let alone the (almost impossible) task of preventing the contamination in a laboratory setting where nanomolar detection levels are used to make broad claims.

Luckily HN software developers, the foremost authority on literally every subject imaginable, are here to bless the world with their insights.

You joke, but given that SWE/AI researchers literally invented AI that does everything else for them and is often super-human at intelligence across most things, I would unironically prefer the opinion of the creator of such a system over most others for most things.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#154

Post by RobGR »

johnbarron wrote: post #86

A rediscovery...six years later: "When Good Intentions Go Bad — False Positive Microplastic Detection Caused by Disposable Gloves" - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03742 From the study in the OP you cannot derive that current studies on microplastics are not valid. The headline framing that scientists have been measuring their own gloves, is science journalism doing what it does best... Stearates are wate…

Why do you say "nothing to see here" ? The existence of the earlier paper does not imply that procedures corrected for this afterwards. Is there any published protocol for a study since that first article that mentions avoiding stearate powder from gloves ?

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#155

Post by Lerc »

titzer wrote: post #114
Lerc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Roughly 50% of indoor dust is composed of microplastics, so it's not like it's uncommon. I highly doubt that. Soil, skin and pollen are usually the big ones. Hairs depending one how you count dust, but eliminating hair like fibres would also eliminate most of the sources of plastic, unless you allow really large particle sizes. [edit] Checking research. The highest claim I found was 39% of fibres (in household dust,…

Synthetic fibers from clothes are microplastics, and clothes shed lots of fibers. Not to mention all the upholstered furniture, carpet, rugs, drapes, bags, etc.

That's why I said

>eliminating hair like fibres would also eliminate most of the sources of plastic

If you allow fibres they'd be 0.01% of fibres if you've got a dog anything like mine.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#156

Post by cachius »

vlz wrote: post #23
thebruce87m wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that exact thing and opened the comments to see you’d already commented with it. There is a “case files” podcast on it that I found quite good.

This seems to be the Casefile episode about the "Phantom of Heilbronn" https://casefilepodcast.com/case-178-the-woman-without-a-fac...

The Phantom of Heilbronn, often alternatively referred to as the Woman Without a Face, was a hypothesized unknown female serial killer whose existence was inferred from DNA evidence found at numerous crime scenes in Austria, France and Germany from 1993 to 2009.

The only connection between the crimes was the presence of DNA from a single female, which had been recovered from 40 crime scenes, ranging from murders to burglaries. In late March 2009, investigators concluded that there was no "phantom criminal", and the DNA had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples; it belonged to a woman who worked at the factory where they were made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#157

Post by [deleted] »

SecretDreams wrote: post #69
sfn42 wrote: post #63

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#158

Post by ktokarev »

the_plastic_detox documentary on netflix promotes the idea that microplastics cause infertility. this is based on 6 couples 90 days experiment.

they tracked levels of plastic-related chemicals and fertility markers. after plastic detox 3 out of 6 couples got pregnant.

the whole research process methodology, not just measurement, miss critical assessment

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#159

Post by oharapj »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #135
cr125rider wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should make a show about that… her name could be Dexterette!

Sad to see that you are downvoted. It's sad seeing that Hackernews doesn't understand Dexter memes.. (Amazing show, Highly recommended) The Bay Harbor Butcheress[0] :) [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/butcheress (at First I made it as a joke but turns out that butcheress is a real term, indeed)

This isn’t Reddit. Awesome bacon sauce posts generally aren’t appreciated

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#160

Post by no_shadowban_3 »

oharapj wrote: post #159
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad to see that you are downvoted. It's sad seeing that Hackernews doesn't understand Dexter memes.. (Amazing show, Highly recommended) The Bay Harbor Butcheress[0] :) [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/butcheress (at First I made it as a joke but turns out that butcheress is a real term, indeed)

This isn’t Reddit. Awesome bacon sauce posts generally aren’t appreciated

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