2. Young-onset cancers (especially colorectal cancer) which were inferred to be caused by a rise in microplastics are being linked explicitly to other mechanisms and cohorts. (https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.3619)
This does not say that and it's irresponsible to summarize it that way. That's a letter addressing a specific study from 2024 (which did record baseline levels because that's a standard experimental design step), arguing that it used an inadequate control so may have had background contamination when reporting the level of microplastics found in bottled water.
A "cohort of core studies" were not involved, and nothing was "judged to have invalid methodology". The study authors also replied, arguing that their choice of blanks was actually the better one: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415874121
There's been a slightly weird trend of people on HN that seem so eager to judge the microplastic story as overblown and unsupported that they're overstating and overextrapolating the smallest counter evidence into its own competing narrative, as if what we needed were more narratives. Resist this! That's not how good science or science communication is done.
reedf1 13 hours ago [-]
I respectfully disagree, this was a commonly cited technique for measuring microplastics, which is why it calls into question many studies. Thanks for calling me weird :) I guess the suggestion though is I'm paid by big plastic or something, no infact I'm just a guy reading papers who is scared of death like everyone else.
magicalist 9 hours ago [-]
> I respectfully disagree, this was a commonly cited technique for measuring microplastics, which is why it calls into question many studies.
What exactly was a commonly cited technique and where is this citation?
Regardless, you said "invalid methodology due to not recording baseline microplastic levels" when that was not the case and wasn't the letter's objection to the study's methodology.
> Thanks for calling me weird :) I guess the suggestion though is I'm paid by big plastic or something, no infact I'm just a guy reading papers who is scared of death like everyone else.
I said the trend was weird, but feel free to pick another adjective. Self contradictory, for instance. Sick of people overextrapolating from these "bombshell" microplastic papers, I will now overextrapolate from these "bombshell" methodological papers.
Look at the publications of the author of that letter and Cassandra Rauert, the lead author of the paper on detecting plastics in human blood that you linked below. Both of them have several publications on the almost universal contamination of the planet with microplastics and are clearly worried about the impact of this. Them insisting on and helping with better science from their colleagues is not laying the question to rest, it's a call to more rigorous action (literally[2]). It is scientific malpractice to call that "growing evidence that there is much less to worry about on microplastics".
> There's been a slightly weird trend of people on HN that seem so eager to judge the microplastic story as overblown and unsupported that they're overstating and overextrapolating the smallest counter evidence into its own competing narrative, as if what we needed were more narratives. Resist this! That's not how good science or science communication is done.
This is completely true and well stated. However, this sort of rush to counter narrative is imo inevitable as a response the original rush to craft the narrative that we were all gonna die immediately micro plastics unless we did a Marxism right away.
I am deeply concerned for the environment of the Earth, I believe strongly that we should embed that concern into our economics (i.e. priced externalities, etc. ) so that we make a fewer bad decisions that pollute our nest.
However, I have sadly come to feel that many journalists who write about science, and perhaps even some scientists, see their role as activism toward a specific outcome rather than discovering and describing reality as it exists.
So while I agree, it’s not productive, I totally understanding the glee felt at the possible puncturing of the original narrative.
zugi 13 hours ago [-]
> However, I have sadly come to feel that many journalists who write about science, and perhaps even some scientists, see their role as activism toward a specific outcome rather than discovering and describing reality as it exists.
That's not a feeling, for journalism anyway it's an explicit fact. The Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) - the primary agency that reviews and accredits journalism programs across the United States and whose mandates directly shape the curricula of over 100 universities - has changed their standards over the years away from emphasis on truth and towards emphasis on advocating change to institute certain policies. See https://www.acejmc.org/about/strategic-plan . They still mention truth, but almost tangentially among long lists of outcomes that journalists must pursue. The current generation of journalists were trained by these principles.
The Associated Press (AP) StyleBook https://www.apstylebook.com/ similarly polices the language that journalists use to favor certain policy outcomes, with some news organizations requiring compliance as a condition of employment.
boston_clone 5 hours ago [-]
please review your first link and read their mission statement; there are three items, and one of those is truth.
“Relentlessly strive to assure information integrity, assuring that truth is
gathered and reported.”
It’s literally the last clause of the last item, basically an afterthought.
> 1. Reimagine teaching and learning of journalism/communication to serve the public.
> 2. Forge diverse and inclusive programs where differences are celebrated, equity
is pursued, and diverse communities are served through improved
communication and journalism instruction.
> 3. Relentlessly strive to assure information integrity, assuring that truth is
gathered and reported.
boston_clone 1 hours ago [-]
an explicit mention in their vision* statement is hardly an afterthought. it’s also the second item in their multi-point action plan. and other mentions elsewhere.
phoronixrly 13 hours ago [-]
But what exactly are you fighting for? What benefits are there to plastic food packaging, plastic kitchen utensils, kitchenware/food storage, clothing?
Plastic packaging made 20% of EU's total packaging waste in 2023 out of which 42% were recycled/downcycled. Personally plastic food packaging is the biggest portion of my family's waste output.
Plastic kitchen utensils like black plastic ladles are not durable (they break easily), and visibly degrade when exposed to heat or acidic food, unlike metal or wooden counterparts...
Plastic kitchenware and food storage containers are also considerably less durable than equivalent metal or glass products. They also stain and degrade when in contact with acidic or other specific foods...
I take it you've worn synthetic clothes, need I go into detail about how uncomfortable that is?
On top of that, most of these are tied with fossil fuel supply and prices, and you can see for yourself what's going on with that right now...
p.s. I'm pretty sure use of metal, glass, and wood is not marxism...
j_maffe 12 hours ago [-]
Those are all great reasons. What's the need to push for yet-to-be-subtantiated fears of microplastics?
What is OP fighting for? Idk, an unbiased view of reality, maybe?
phoronixrly 11 hours ago [-]
My point is that limiting plastic use (especially single-use plastic) is a win in my book even if it is ultimately done for the wrong reason. Thus it's not worth my time going out of my way to disprove specific research that still ultimately points out the need to curtail plastic use...
therobots927 12 hours ago [-]
What benefits? Single use plastics have one purpose and one purpose only: allow for fossil fuel producers to dispose of the ethane byproduct that accumulates during extraction. They get paid for the disposal vs having to process it as waste themselves.
therobots927 13 hours ago [-]
I’ve never heard Marxism mentioned in the same sentence as microplastics. If you think advocating for a functioning EPA and regulatory control of manufacturing is Marxist then you’re just a straight up fool.
mrhottakes 12 hours ago [-]
"Straight Up Fool"-ism is running rampant on HN
card_zero 15 hours ago [-]
"Exercise induced gastrointestinal injury"!
elric 15 hours ago [-]
Can't read the full study, but it seems to be specifically about people who run ultramarathons. Which sounds like a very small subset of the general population. I doubt that tiny cohort is in any way responsible for the overall increase in bowel cancer in younger people.
reedf1 13 hours ago [-]
Actually this is the shocking part - it actually is enough to move the needle. Incidents of young people with cancer is small so a 100% increase can be driven by a small absolute number of patients. There has been an absolutely enormous increasing in high endurance sport something more like 20x (or 1900% increase) and ultramarathon/marathon runners are 7.5x more likely to get colon cancer, so this leads to a surprisingly large relative increase in colon cancer.
kuerbel 17 hours ago [-]
I think those papers mostly show that parts of the microplastics literature were overstated or methodologically weak, not that microplastics are harmless.
The PNAS paper is a pretty good critique of contamination/baseline issues, and I agree some of the “microplastics are causing young-onset cancer” claims got ahead of the evidence.
But the broader concern still exists: people are clearly exposed constantly, particles are being found in human tissue, and there are plausible mechanisms for harm. So no, there is not "much less to worry".
reedf1 16 hours ago [-]
I agree that there is not evidence to "not worry", but many explicit worries are being accounted for.
Also - in terms of human tissue:
"The problem is that some small molecules in the fumes derived from polyethylene and PVC can also be produced from fats in human tissue. Human samples are “digested” with chemicals to remove tissue before analysis, but if some remains the result can be false positives for MNPs. Rauert’s paper lists 18 studies that did not include consideration of the risk of such false positives." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...)
Fortunately however it's not hard to tell when people calling others "complete moron" are acting out of bad faith.
12 hours ago [-]
therobots927 12 hours ago [-]
I don’t cooperate while others defect. I don’t subscribe to the marketplace of ideas or see any point in engaging in good faith with someone signaling bad faith.
A segment of the population has decided that they don’t care if economic growth comes at the price of health of ourselves or our environment. As far as I’m concerned, that is a declaration of war. An announcement of intent to carry out a mass genocide on their fellow human beings. There’s no point in debate. I just want them to know that we know what they’re up to.
j_maffe 12 hours ago [-]
Then don't reply.
procaryote 12 hours ago [-]
I feel the field of microplastics has done itself no favours by referring to everything < 5mm as a microplastic particle. 5mm is huge. In american terms, it's amost as wide as a .22 calibre bullet, or a popcorn kernel
schobi 20 hours ago [-]
Summary: dry contact with nearly any laboratory glove will lead to sample contamination and over estimation of microplastics.
They found one type of clean room gloves that contaminate less.
Is there any indication on how bad this really is?
martiuk 18 hours ago [-]
Around 2000 to over 7000 false positives per mm^2 based on the type of glove. Essentially, regular lab gloves shed enough particles to swamp microplastic measurements to warrant switching to clean room gloves for this type of analysis.
ginko 16 hours ago [-]
Shouldn't any lab analysis have control samples to detect environment contamination like this?
AlpinMouton 16 hours ago [-]
It's difficult to avoid contamination, since everything (samples, containers, equipements, etc) will have been in contact with glove at least once, and good decontamination is very hard.
nom 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, exactly, that's why you use control samples to get the baseline.
DangitBobby 14 hours ago [-]
You see how it's a bit of a self-starting problem?
ginko 13 hours ago [-]
Let's say you want to determine the amount of microplastics in ocean water samples.
You'd create a control by creating saline solution with distilled water and sodium chloride. Then you treat both the control and your sample(s) the same way in the analysis.
Surely something should tick you off when the microplastic levels aren't much lower in your control compared to your actual sample?
mrob 12 hours ago [-]
Freshly cleaved mica has an extremely clean and flat surface.
giantg2 13 hours ago [-]
This shouldn't really be a problem. Just use aseptic techniques to avoid glove contact (direct, indirect, and airborne) with the test material.
feverzsj 16 hours ago [-]
Now, I'm worried about people preparing my food with gloves.
hackeraccount 7 hours ago [-]
Am I the only person who's a bit disturbed by that (new?) trend of chefs always wearing black latex gloves? As a person who dislikes having sticky hands I can appreciate the appeal but something about it seems a bit off.
janderson215 16 hours ago [-]
“Are you wearing gloves? That’s disgusting. Use your bare hands, you animal.”
Saline9515 14 hours ago [-]
Actually bare hands ok while working in food production if correctly washed with an antimicrobial agent, and assuming one doesn't pick his nose on the job.
amatecha 9 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I wouldn't care if someone cooks with bare hands, assuming they actually wash their hands properly. I'm only unhappy when I see them taking their nasty smartphone out of their pocket and doing something with that, then continuing to cook without washing their hands (or without putting on new gloves). Gross!
akramachamarei 13 hours ago [-]
Picking noses presumably isn't a unique problem to bare hand prep, unless the ungloved finger is somehow a more tempting scoop?
tekla 13 hours ago [-]
I find that picking your nose can be a unconscious thing you do, but the sensation of sticking a glove into your nose quickly makes it very not unconscious very fast
But of course, hopefully the person in question will choose to change the glove.
Otherwise yes, glove wearing dogma is overdone, however still, should probably wear them.
mrhottakes 12 hours ago [-]
Just like high end chefs do. It works fine.
elgertam 15 hours ago [-]
"I only allow robots with stainless steel tools to prepare and serve my food."
1. A whole cohort of core studies have been judged to have invalid methodology due to not recording baseline microplastic levels (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2411099121)
2. Young-onset cancers (especially colorectal cancer) which were inferred to be caused by a rise in microplastics are being linked explicitly to other mechanisms and cohorts. (https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.3619)
This does not say that and it's irresponsible to summarize it that way. That's a letter addressing a specific study from 2024 (which did record baseline levels because that's a standard experimental design step), arguing that it used an inadequate control so may have had background contamination when reporting the level of microplastics found in bottled water.
A "cohort of core studies" were not involved, and nothing was "judged to have invalid methodology". The study authors also replied, arguing that their choice of blanks was actually the better one: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415874121
There's been a slightly weird trend of people on HN that seem so eager to judge the microplastic story as overblown and unsupported that they're overstating and overextrapolating the smallest counter evidence into its own competing narrative, as if what we needed were more narratives. Resist this! That's not how good science or science communication is done.
What exactly was a commonly cited technique and where is this citation?
Regardless, you said "invalid methodology due to not recording baseline microplastic levels" when that was not the case and wasn't the letter's objection to the study's methodology.
> Thanks for calling me weird :) I guess the suggestion though is I'm paid by big plastic or something, no infact I'm just a guy reading papers who is scared of death like everyone else.
I said the trend was weird, but feel free to pick another adjective. Self contradictory, for instance. Sick of people overextrapolating from these "bombshell" microplastic papers, I will now overextrapolate from these "bombshell" methodological papers.
Look at the publications of the author of that letter and Cassandra Rauert, the lead author of the paper on detecting plastics in human blood that you linked below. Both of them have several publications on the almost universal contamination of the planet with microplastics and are clearly worried about the impact of this. Them insisting on and helping with better science from their colleagues is not laying the question to rest, it's a call to more rigorous action (literally[2]). It is scientific malpractice to call that "growing evidence that there is much less to worry about on microplastics".
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48133269
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00702-2
This is completely true and well stated. However, this sort of rush to counter narrative is imo inevitable as a response the original rush to craft the narrative that we were all gonna die immediately micro plastics unless we did a Marxism right away.
I am deeply concerned for the environment of the Earth, I believe strongly that we should embed that concern into our economics (i.e. priced externalities, etc. ) so that we make a fewer bad decisions that pollute our nest.
However, I have sadly come to feel that many journalists who write about science, and perhaps even some scientists, see their role as activism toward a specific outcome rather than discovering and describing reality as it exists.
So while I agree, it’s not productive, I totally understanding the glee felt at the possible puncturing of the original narrative.
That's not a feeling, for journalism anyway it's an explicit fact. The Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) - the primary agency that reviews and accredits journalism programs across the United States and whose mandates directly shape the curricula of over 100 universities - has changed their standards over the years away from emphasis on truth and towards emphasis on advocating change to institute certain policies. See https://www.acejmc.org/about/strategic-plan . They still mention truth, but almost tangentially among long lists of outcomes that journalists must pursue. The current generation of journalists were trained by these principles.
The Associated Press (AP) StyleBook https://www.apstylebook.com/ similarly polices the language that journalists use to favor certain policy outcomes, with some news organizations requiring compliance as a condition of employment.
“Relentlessly strive to assure information integrity, assuring that truth is gathered and reported.”
https://www.acejmc.org/about/strategic-plan
> 1. Reimagine teaching and learning of journalism/communication to serve the public.
> 2. Forge diverse and inclusive programs where differences are celebrated, equity is pursued, and diverse communities are served through improved communication and journalism instruction.
> 3. Relentlessly strive to assure information integrity, assuring that truth is gathered and reported.
Plastic packaging made 20% of EU's total packaging waste in 2023 out of which 42% were recycled/downcycled. Personally plastic food packaging is the biggest portion of my family's waste output.
Plastic kitchen utensils like black plastic ladles are not durable (they break easily), and visibly degrade when exposed to heat or acidic food, unlike metal or wooden counterparts...
Plastic kitchenware and food storage containers are also considerably less durable than equivalent metal or glass products. They also stain and degrade when in contact with acidic or other specific foods...
I take it you've worn synthetic clothes, need I go into detail about how uncomfortable that is?
On top of that, most of these are tied with fossil fuel supply and prices, and you can see for yourself what's going on with that right now...
p.s. I'm pretty sure use of metal, glass, and wood is not marxism...
What is OP fighting for? Idk, an unbiased view of reality, maybe?
The PNAS paper is a pretty good critique of contamination/baseline issues, and I agree some of the “microplastics are causing young-onset cancer” claims got ahead of the evidence.
But the broader concern still exists: people are clearly exposed constantly, particles are being found in human tissue, and there are plausible mechanisms for harm. So no, there is not "much less to worry".
Also - in terms of human tissue:
"The problem is that some small molecules in the fumes derived from polyethylene and PVC can also be produced from fats in human tissue. Human samples are “digested” with chemicals to remove tissue before analysis, but if some remains the result can be false positives for MNPs. Rauert’s paper lists 18 studies that did not include consideration of the risk of such false positives." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...)
and Rauert's paper (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c12599)
A segment of the population has decided that they don’t care if economic growth comes at the price of health of ourselves or our environment. As far as I’m concerned, that is a declaration of war. An announcement of intent to carry out a mass genocide on their fellow human beings. There’s no point in debate. I just want them to know that we know what they’re up to.
Is there any indication on how bad this really is?
You'd create a control by creating saline solution with distilled water and sodium chloride. Then you treat both the control and your sample(s) the same way in the analysis.
Surely something should tick you off when the microplastic levels aren't much lower in your control compared to your actual sample?
But of course, hopefully the person in question will choose to change the glove.
Otherwise yes, glove wearing dogma is overdone, however still, should probably wear them.
— Segregationist, Isaac Asimov, 1967: <https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v035n04_...>