Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

news.umich.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 282 posts

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#181

Post by mapontosevenths »

parineum wrote: post #176
mapontosevenths wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

> The world is too large, too complex, and too nuanced for the layman's opinion to be worth much. This has a very, "Trust us, we're with the government." feel to it. I enjoy Asimov's writing immensely but if you think quotations are some kind of mic drop, I'll leave you with this one. "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched"…

I am right and I suspect you know it... you just don't like the way it makes you feel. Hence your focus on vibes and ad hominums rather than reason.

It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#182

Post by RobGR »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #178
eigenspace wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think that while it's true that we haven't really demonstrated any tangible harms of microplastics, and there is a lot of alarmism around it, I think the concern is more rational than it might appear. If it's true that microplastics are everywhere and in everything (which maybe that's now not actually the case), even a very small chance that there's some serious harm we're not aware of should be taken extremely…

We aren't really looking. In the most well known case we were able to identify they were killing salmon because the salmon were dieing and worked back from that, not because some study led there first. https://www.ehn.org/toxic-tire-chemicals-threaten-salmon-as-...

That is a case of a specific chemical in tires, not microplastics generally, or even rubber tire particles generally.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#183

Post by dahart »

timr wrote: post #174
dahart wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are more “controls” what is necessary here? The problem wasn’t plastic contamination, it was the presence of stearates. Distinguishing between stearates and microplastics sounds like a classification problem, not a control problem. There is practically universal recognition among microplastics researchers that contamination is possible and that strong quality controls are needed, and to be transparent and reproducibl…

Many papers in this field are missing obvious controls, but you’re correct that controls alone are insufficient to solve this problem. When you are taking measurements at the detection limit of any molecule that is widespread in the environment, you are going to have a difficult time of distinguishing signal from background. This requires sampling and replication and rigorous application of statistical inference. > A…

You’re still bringing up different issues than this article we are commenting on.

> There’s no such thing as “overestimating in baseline samples”

What do you mean? Contamination and mis-measurement of control samples is a thing that actually happens all the time, and invalidates experiments when discovered.

> What you’re trying to say is that if there’s a chemical everywhere, the prevalence makes it harder to claim that small measurement differences in the “treatment” arm are significant.

No. What I was trying to say is that if the control is either mis-measured, for example by accidentally counting stearates as microplastics, or contaminated, then the summary outcome may underestimate or understate the prevalence of microplastics in the test sample, even though the measurement over-estimated it.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#184

Post by 0xffff2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #119
cogman10 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily, I believe the glove mandates for food prep are actually anti-hygiene. Unlike bare skin, you can't really feel when your gloves are contaminated. So you are less likely to replace gloves when you should. With bare hands, you can feel the raw chicken juices on you, so it's pretty natural to want to wash your hands right after handling the raw chicken. Gloves are important in medicine, but that's with proper us…

> So you are less likely to replace gloves when you should. To the contrary. You take off and throw out your gloves every time you finish doing something with raw meat. It's procedure. It's habit. You're never relying on "feel" to determine whether there are "raw chicken juices on you". Using "feel" is not reliable. I don't know why you think food service workers aren't constantly putting on new gloves, but doctors a…

> I don't know why you think food service workers aren't constantly putting on new gloves, but doctors and nurses are. Like, if you're cutting up chicken for an hour you're not, but if you're moving from chicken to veggies you absolutely are.

I think that because I was a food service worker and it's impossible to change gloves during a rush. Nitrile gloves and sweaty hands simply do not mix. There are also many more forms of cross contamination than just raw meat to cooked food.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#185

Post by dahart »

njarboe wrote: post #179
dahart wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are more “controls” what is necessary here? The problem wasn’t plastic contamination, it was the presence of stearates. Distinguishing between stearates and microplastics sounds like a classification problem, not a control problem. There is practically universal recognition among microplastics researchers that contamination is possible and that strong quality controls are needed, and to be transparent and reproducibl…

Any scientific paper that does not document how things were done (methodologies) is basically worthless in the search for truth.

I agree completely. My point is that documenting methodology is standard practice, as is strict quality control, in the microplastics literature. I don’t know what controls are missing according to GP, and we don’t yet have references here to back up that claim. By and large I think researchers are aware of the difficulties measuring this stuff, and doing everything they can to ensure valid science.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#187

Post by kevinob11 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #178
eigenspace wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think that while it's true that we haven't really demonstrated any tangible harms of microplastics, and there is a lot of alarmism around it, I think the concern is more rational than it might appear. If it's true that microplastics are everywhere and in everything (which maybe that's now not actually the case), even a very small chance that there's some serious harm we're not aware of should be taken extremely…

We aren't really looking. In the most well known case we were able to identify they were killing salmon because the salmon were dieing and worked back from that, not because some study led there first. https://www.ehn.org/toxic-tire-chemicals-threaten-salmon-as-...

Isn't [bad thing is happening] let's work backwards and find [difficult to find cause] a really solid approach?

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#188

Post by lstodd »

Lerc wrote: post #155
titzer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dog, ha. Try a longhair cat. You'll be extracting balls of fur from most unexpected body cavities.

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#189

Post by Eisenstein »

0xffff2 wrote: post #184
crazygringo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you are less likely to replace gloves when you should. To the contrary. You take off and throw out your gloves every time you finish doing something with raw meat. It's procedure. It's habit. You're never relying on "feel" to determine whether there are "raw chicken juices on you". Using "feel" is not reliable. I don't know why you think food service workers aren't constantly putting on new gloves, but doctors a…

> I don't know why you think food service workers aren't constantly putting on new gloves, but doctors and nurses are. Like, if you're cutting up chicken for an hour you're not, but if you're moving from chicken to veggies you absolutely are. I think that because I was a food service worker and it's impossible to change gloves during a rush. Nitrile gloves and sweaty hands simply do not mix. There are also many more…

If you don't have time to change gloves how do you have time to wash your hands?

Re: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics

#190

Post by gus_massa »

sarchertech wrote: post #165
gus_massa wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, when the Covid vaccine was being rushed to be approved, I didn’t 100% trust that Trump wouldn’t pressure the FDA to approve without being confident it was safe. So my standard at the time was that I’d take it if the FDA and at least one other developed country approved it.

Here in Argentina we approved the Sputnik vaccine. It was approved only here and in Russia. And here it was approved not by the standard office (ANMAT), but by a special resolution of the Health Ministry.
Post reply on HN