@3liza they didnât account for it because they didnât realize it was an issue. The particles the gloves are shedding are not microplastics but they are similar enough in composition and under an electron microscope that because the scientists didnât know to account for them, they didnât realize thatâs what they were seeing.
Also they DID account for contamination in WET sample preparation, because theyâd already learned previously that the nitrile gloves could contaminate wet samples, but this was the first discovery that they were contaminating DRY or AIRBORNE samples as well.
All of this was very clearly laid out in just the last provided link - i didnât even have to read all of them to learn this, I read like 3 paragraphs of the nautil.us article and I was able to learn what happened and why it hadnât been accounted for.
Like, I understand the frustration, but this is the sort of thing that has to be DISCOVERED before it can be accounted for, and this is what that kind of discovery looks like, and berating scientists for not already knowing something science hadnât yet learned is kind of a pointless and bad faith approach to things.
Weâve learned that a lot of the studies done on microplastics in our environment were not actually accurate, and had unintentionally incorrectly inflated numbers of microplastics in their samples due to this issue, which means that while microplastics are still obviously a problem, theyâre not as overwhelming large of a problem than we thought! This is a good thing! Science has done its job and we have learned new things and can now do even better science! Thereâs no reason to be angry at or berate the scientists whoâve gone before. We know better now. Thatâs the important part.
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