I'm quite possibly missing something, but this is baffling to me (Text S1 from the paper) [1]:
> All the chopped carrots were carefully transferred to the glass wash tray. As shown in Figure 2,
> 500 mL of ultrapure water was used to wash the blade and the chopping board further to transfer all the particles in the same glass wash tray.
Who would expect contaminants left on the blade and the board to be counted alongside those in the chopped food itself? I suppose it's difficult to rigorously separate the chopped and the chopped-upon, but the distinction seems essential to support, or not, the hypothesis about human consumption.
> All the chopped carrots were carefully transferred to the glass wash tray. As shown in Figure 2,
> 500 mL of ultrapure water was used to wash the blade and the chopping board further to transfer all the particles in the same glass wash tray.
Who would expect contaminants left on the blade and the board to be counted alongside those in the chopped food itself? I suppose it's difficult to rigorously separate the chopped and the chopped-upon, but the distinction seems essential to support, or not, the hypothesis about human consumption.
[1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c00924?ref=PDF