Overview
- University of Michigan researchers report that nitrile and latex gloves shed stearate particles onto sampling surfaces, causing tests to overcount supposed microplastics.
- The glove residues are not plastic, yet their chemical fingerprints resemble polyethylene in infrared and Raman spectroscopy, and they look nearly identical under microscopes.
- Experiments across seven glove types showed up to thousands of false positives per square millimeter, with most particles smaller than 5 micrometers, a size central to health risk estimates.
- Cleanroom gloves made without stearate coatings released far fewer particles, and the team recommends either avoiding glove contact when safe or switching to these alternatives.
- The authors developed methods to sort glove-derived signals from real plastics after finding airborne counts that were vastly higher than past studies, and they plan to redo sampling with revised protocols while stressing that microplastic pollution remains a real concern.