Bottled water can contain thousands of tiny pieces of plastic

On average, one litre of bottled water contained around 240,000 detectable plastic fragments.

The bottled water may contain hundreds of thousands of plastic fragments, which have significant effects on human health, according to Research published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".

As the researchers found, on average one litre of bottled water contained about 240,000 detectable plastic fragments, i.e. ten to 100 times more than previous estimates. These are nanoplastics so tiny that they can pass from the intestines and lungs directly into the bloodstream and then into organs such as the heart and brain. They can even pass through the placenta and into the bodies of embryos. Scientists aim to study the possible effects on a wide variety of biological systems.

Global plastic production is approaching 400 million tonnes per year. More than 30 million tonnes are dumped each year into water or on land and many products made with plastics, including synthetic fabrics, release particles while still in use. Most of the plastics used in the manufacture of plastics, including plastics made from synthetic materials such as plastic, are also used while they are still being produced. plastics do not decay, they just split again and again into smaller and smaller particles of the same chemical composition.

Plastics in bottled water were first identified in a 2018 study that measured an average of 325 particles per litre, with subsequent studies multiplying this number, although the estimates stopped at sizes below one micrometre, the limit of nanoplastics.

The new study uses a technique called Raman excited scattering microscopy, invented by one of the study's authors, Columbia University biophysicist Wei Min. The researchers also created a data-driven algorithm to interpret the results. They then tested three brands of bottled water sold in USA and analysed plastic particles as small as 100 nanometres in size. They identified 110,000 to 370,000 particles in each litre, 90% of which were nanoplastics and the rest were microplastics.

One of the plastics they identified was polyethylene terephthalate or PET. This was not surprising, since that's what many water bottles and may enter the water as pieces come off when the bottle is pressed or exposed to heat. There was also widespread detection of polyamide, a type of nylon, which probably comes from the plastic filters used to purify water before bottling. Other compounds found by the researchers are used in various industrial processes, such as polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polymethyl methacrylate.

Worryingly, the seven types of plastics the researchers looked for represented only 10% of all the nanoparticles they found in the samples, while the rest they don't know what they are. If they are all nanoplastics, that means their number could be tens of millions per litre.

Η research team plans to test tap water, which has also been shown to contain microplastics, although much less than bottled water.

Baizan Yan, one of the study's authors, an environmental chemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is also working on a project to study the microplastics and nanoplastics that end up in wastewater when people wash their clothes, and his calculations so far put the number at millions per ten-kilogram load. He and his team are even designing filters to reduce pollution from domestic and commercial washing machines. The team is also working with environmental health experts to measure nanoplastics in human tissues and examine their developmental and neurological effects.

Source.