Photo: Kier in Sight Archives, Unsplash
Microplastic Menace; In The Quantum Realm!:
File this update as another case of, “Well, we thought it was safe because…”
A short while ago, we found a study that showed people were right to be cautious about plastic water bottles.
Not only did they have BPA in them before.
But that recent study found after awhile, they can leach between 300-500 different chemicals into the water that’s in them.
In many cases, this was even true of reusable bottles that had been put through the dishwasher.
The detergent alone introduced another 3500 chemicals into them, too.
But now Columbia & Rutgers teams are showing us we have a different problem…
The Short Answer:
- Recent studies showed that plastic may not be inert or harmless.
- Plastic water bottles have a bit of a history with this.
- Just like any technology, plastics seem to come with trade-offs.
- Columbia & Rutgers teams just found a lot more plastic in bottled water than before.
- An older, less sophisticated study underestimated the amount by as much as 10-100x.
- The number now stands at almost 250,000 in one liter of bottled water.
- What’s worse is 90% of those particles are very small nano-plastics.
- Only 10% of the particles are 5 known types. The others are unknown.
- Something similar can happen to tap water because of the filters used.
- The problem is that these plastics may not be chemically or physically inert.
- The small particles seem to make it into almost any tissues in the body.
- Inflammation could be only one of the problems they cause at that small size.
- In a separate study, Chinese researchers have discovered you can remove microplastics from water by boiling it.
- You just need to let it cool, so mineral crystals can trap the plastics.
- Then pouring them through a paper coffee filter in a glass or ceramic cone is all you need!
- Perhaps we all got lulled into thinking plastic was some kind of inert panacea, but maybe we should start getting away from it as much as we can?
Read on to find out the details…
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New Technology Might Not Always Equal Utopia:
So it looks like for all the innovations we have, there are trade-offs, too.
Electric cars are supposedly better for the environment but they use natgas or coal-fired power and scary places that mine & refine nickel.
There are all kinds of chemicals out there, but very few of them are tested for their effects on humans.
And finally, plastics have done something for every industry you can think of, but not without environmental concerns.
The latest environment they’re affecting seems to be the human body!
!LASERS! Find Tons Of Microplastics In Your Water:
In some surprising work using superfine filters and lasers,
Columbia & Rutgers research teams found the modern miracle of plastics is making its way into your water in ominous forms.
They found that there are almost a quarter of a million bits of plastic in one liter of bottled water.
This is at least 100x what they thought they would find.
The composition of it was 10% microplastics and 90% nanoplastics (1000x smaller)*.
A Few Microplastic Sources Are Known, But Most Are Not:
The main sources of these is the bottles the water is in and the filters they’re run though.
Strangely enough, this also happens with your local tap water because of similar filters at the treatment plant.
But wait, it gets even better!
Three other main types of plastics were also found in the water.
And one of the many problems this study raises is that those 5 total represented only 10% of all the nanoplastics.
Much like all the weird chemicals that out-gas into your house from cleaning products, 90% of that amount is so far unknown.
But Wait! Isn’t Plastic Just Inert Anyway?:
“So what!”-you say?
The problem is that those particles may not be inert, as we generally like to think about plastic.
They may not be chemically inert, and they might also not be physically inert either.
The reason being is that just like Ant Man in The Quantum Realm, they are really small.
They’re so small that they can get into all kinds of tissues in your body, and even into the cells.
These include intestines, the placenta, and even organs like the heart and brain.
On such a small scale, we really don’t know what they’re going to do,
Or if they’ll release some of those chemicals from that previous leaching study -right- into the cells of your body at close range.
Here Are Some Of The Potential Problems Researchers Forecast:
The thing we don’t yet know is what health problems could result from this spread.
Some ideas right now are:
1) Releasing toxic chemicals
2) Carrying harmful microbes
3) Accumulating in tissues, organs, and cells
3a) Disrupting the function of them
4) Disrupting your gut microbes
5) Causing inflammation or worse all over the body
And those are just guesses.
What types of chemical reactions will they start, stop, or even modify at such a small level?
What happens when the micro-plastics keep breaking down into smaller particles and just like the water, most of what’s in you could be nanoplastics?
Either way, for researchers to find this much plastic in bottled water on both the micro, and nano scales is not a good omen.
Just When You Thought There Was No Hope… Old-School Solution!:
But wait! All hope is not lost!
Researchers in China just found a very effective old-school hack to at least help in your home.
Back a long time ago, we didn’t have the greatest water treatment systems.
-Like the ones now that are putting plastics into the water as a result of the filters they use.
SO, you used to Boil your tap water to make it safe!
Well guess what you do to make your tap water, or any bottled water safe from microplastics!
That’s right! All it takes is about 5-10 minutes.
The trick after that comes from a little chemistry.
Trap The Plastics, Then Filter Them Like Coffee:
If it’s fairly hard water with minerals in it, the plastic gets caught in new crystals that are formed as the water boils and then cools.
The next step after you let it cool is to pour it through a paper coffee filter into a pitcher.
(amazon has some great ceramic and glass filter cones here)
After you do that, you have just removed 90% of the microplastics from your water, if it’s considered hard, ie. with a lot of minerals in it.
For soft water, you would have removed something like 25% from it; still not too bad.
The researchers tested this by also deliberately introducing NMPs (nano-micro-plastics) into the sample.
It is a bit of a pain and does add extra steps, but it works better than anything else we have now except the expensive reverse-osmosis stuff.
All that being said, the obvious other choices are to get away from plastic water containers as much as we can.
Maybe something like old-school glass bottles will make a comeback in supermarkets and other places.
I guess we can close this out with an increasingly-common footer: Maybe not all new technology is good?
References & Links:
• Source: EurekAlert
• Source Studies:
•Chemistry – Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy
•ACS – Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics
•Front.Chem – Synthetic Polymer Contamination in Bottled Water [2018]
*The range in size from nano to micro goes from about 1/1,000 of a mm to 5mm.
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