Yet another example of capitalism "at it's best" - so called innovation that is actually a step backwards - socialized risk, private profit.
These tea bags release billions of plastic particles into your brew, study shows
September 27, 2019 at 2:07 p.m. EDT
Tufenkji
was worried that the plastic bags could leach particles into the
beverage that she and her fellow customers were consuming, and as a
professor of chemical engineering at McGill University, she was well
positioned to investigate. She dispatched her student Laura Hernandez to
purchase tea bags from stores in the area and bring them back to the
lab.
It
turns out Tufenkji’s hunch was right. The bags were releasing plastic
particles into the brewed tea. Billions and billions of them.
Hernandez, Tufenkji and their fellow researchers at McGill University
tested four kinds of plastic tea bags in boiling water, and found that a
single bag would release more than 11 billion microplastic and 3
billion nanoplastic particles. You would not be able to see the
contamination with your own eyes; the researchers had to use an electron
microscope. But it’s there.
Their findings were published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology this month.
The
four brands of tea they tested came from regular grocery stores in
Montreal. After emptying and cleaning the tea bags of any trace of tea
leaves, they submerged them in water heated to 203 degrees Fahrenheit,
and then they left the bags to steep for five minutes.
The
researchers then examined the water for leftover particles, placing
drops on a slide and examining them under an electron microscope. There,
they could see particles of varying sizes, some a little larger, some
frighteningly small. Further testing of additional samples revealed
their structures and confirmed that the material was made of the same
plastic materials as PET, a kind of polyester, and nylon. It was clear,
Tufenkji said, that the plastic was coming from the tea bags themselves,
not the tea.
Though
Tufenkji declined to name the brands they used for fear of singling out
one company over others, she said that some frequent tea drinkers could
be repeatedly dosing themselves with billions of particles of plastic
as they drank the beverage day after day. Some of the particles, she
noted, would be small enough to potentially infiltrate human cells.
Some
manufacturers sell tea in plastic bags rather than loose or in paper
bags, even as the public becomes increasingly aware of how plastic is
clogging our bodies of water, as well as our bodies.
While the health implications of consuming plastic are unknown, people
around the world are inadvertently eating quite a lot of it.
Earlier this year, a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature
estimated that on average, a person might ingest 5 grams of plastic a
week, the equivalent size of a credit card. Researchers at the
University of Newcastle in Australia compiled dozens of studies on the
presence of plastic in water, as well as in food such as shellfish and
even beer. Studies are underway to establish how plastic consumption can
affect human health, according to WWF’s study.
While
the McGill study did not explore the human health effects of consuming
this plastic, when some of the particles were given to water fleas, they
began acting erratically and developed some deformities, Tufenkji said.
“We
just wanted to make the public aware of this,” she said. “We want
consumers to know that this is made of plastic so they can have the
choice about whether this is really what they want to purchase.”
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