Paper in Analytical Methods finds standard nitrile/latex gloves shed stearate salts that mimic microplastics in IR/Raman spectra, producing ~2000 false positives per mm2.
Key Takeaways
Standard nitrile and latex gloves leave non-volatile stearate salt residues on dry contact; these residues match synthetic polymer spectral libraries, inflating microplastic counts.
Mean false positive rate: ~2000 particles/mm2 for common gloves vs. ~100/mm2 for nitrile cleanroom gloves.
Effect is worst at the smallest size ranges (sub-10 µm), exactly where environmental monitoring is most contested.
Team built spectral library workflows for IR and Raman datasets to retroactively strip stearate contamination from existing environmental data.
Published stearate standard spectral libraries are included, enabling other labs to audit and correct prior datasets.
