Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech A growing contingent of the scientific community has become skeptical about the body of research finding that microplastics have infiltrated almost every aspect of nature, from the remotest regions of Earth to inside our bodies. As The Guardian reported earlier this year, scientists have started warned that some of these studies may be based on errors due bad methodology, inadequate efforts to limit plastic contamination, and lack of validation. Now, researchers from the University of Michigan have found that the special coating on commonly used nitrile and latex gloves worn by scientists could be causing measured levels of microplastics to shoot through the roof, even though the coating isn’t technically made of microplastics itself. As detailed in a recent paper published in the journal Analytical Methods, special substances added to disposable gloves to make them separate from molds more easily, called stearates, are chemically very similar to microplastics, making them almost impossible to distinguish in the lab. However, …