Researchers found that these gloves can unintentionally transfer particles onto lab tools used to analyze air, water, and other environmental samples. The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics.
“It led to a wild goose chase of trying to figure out where this contamination could possibly have come from, because we just knew this number was far too high to be correct,”
To investigate further, the researchers tested seven different types of gloves, including nitrile, latex, and cleanroom varieties, along with commonly used methods for identifying microplastics.
On average, the gloves introduced around 2,000 false positive signals per square millimeter.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260329222938.htm