19 ms·
Microplastics found in 90 percent of table salt
- nubela 8y agoHow can I buy salt that does not have this?
- thecolorblue 8y ago> The three brands that did not contain microplastics are from Taiwan (refined sea salt), China (refined rock salt), and France (unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation) There might be more info in the research paper linked in the article.
- black6 8y agoThat's great. Information on which brands are not contaminated is behind the ACS paywall. Good job, academia.
- ravenstine 8y ago> unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation Hmmm... that seems counterintuitive. I'd think that sea salt that's refined would contain less microplastic, not the other way around. Maybe they get their seawater from a part of the ocean that doesn't have microplastic? Also, I'd think that Himalayan salt would contain no microplastic, but then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Himalayan salt wasn't actually from the Himalayas.
- usrusr 8y agoMaybe the testers happened upon some very old stock that has gone through the evaporation pits before the plastic revolution. That industry goes way back.
- supertrope 8y agoThe process of crystallization excludes impurities. But that means they're not embedded in crystals, not that the heap of salt is free of impurities. I too discount food labeling claims.
- rladd 8y agoUnfortunately there isn't.
- ceejayoz 8y agoEasiest way is probably to get the pink salt from the Himalayas. The health claims around it are bogus, but as it's mined from the mountains (and usually sold in a highly unrefined format) it's fairly unlikely ocean microplastics have wound up in it. It's also readily identifiable in a way white chunks of salt aren't. > In another indicator of the geographic density of plastic pollution, microplastics levels were highest in sea salt, followed by lake salt and then rock salt.
- mtgx 8y agoIsn't there a slight worry that since it's not refined it might contain other harmful stuff? I admit I only read this once in passing and didn't investigate further. Also, does the Himalayan salt contain iodine? Because otherwise you may soon get a iodine deficiency. The reason iodine is added in table salt in the first place is because most people would be deficient otherwise.
- ceejayoz 8y agoEven before iodized salt, goiters were location dependent. The modern diet likely contains enough iodine from other sources - seafood, dairy, eggs, processed foods - that non-iodized table salt isn't likely to matter much. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/cut-salt-it-wont-affect-your-iodine-intake https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/cut-salt-it-wont...
- ksenzee 8y agoTrue - but the modern diet probably also contains enough microplastics from other sources that avoiding them in salt isn't likely to matter much. :(
- soperj 8y agoI've used Himalayan salt for decades, no iodine deficiency. Unless you only eat at home, and no processed foods, you're likely getting plenty of iodine elsewhere.
- pseudoanonymity 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- growlist 8y agoAt least here in the UK you can get UK rock salt, which I'd expect to be free of microplastics - it's mined from under the ground where it's been sitting for aeons, so unless the processing introduces microplastics (seems unlikely) I'd expect it to be pure.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoTFA indicates rock salt also contain microplastics. If you're really paranoid, I'd suggest buying salt with sizeable crystals, and then rinse those in a saturated salt water bath. It seems to me these microplastics are not included in the salt grains, but rather dispersed among them. So they would float up. You could also check for microplastics in the salt you usually buy. Just dissolve 100g in 10L of water, and filter that through a dark finely woven cloth.
- thfuran 8y agoI'd rather melt the salt to take care of any infiltrating plastics.
- Reason077 8y agoIn the case of sea salt, doesn’t the salt crystal form around a seed particle? The plastic particles are seeding the crystal, so do end up “inside” the grains.
- docker_up 8y agoMicroplastics are already in the water supply. And they are microns large, so filtering it in cloth is useless.
- hathawsh 8y agoThe Real Salt company (Utah, USA) asserts their salt is not contaminated: https://realsalt.com/has-real-salt-sea-salt-been-contaminated-by-plastic/ https://realsalt.com/has-real-salt-sea-salt-been-contaminate... Real Salt is in local stores and at Amazon. Full disclosure: I do have an indirect affiliation with Real Salt.
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoI'm actually pleased that the article points out that we don't even know if eating microplastics even matter. I totally expected it to default to the assumption that eating the plastic is by default harmful via magic
- conscion 8y agoAlmost all plastic release chemicals having estrogenic activity [1] so not be default harmful, but probably harmful. [1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/)
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoOTOH, all those chemicals are problematic precisely because they leach out into water. So you might expect marine microplastics to contain little-to-none EA chemicals, as they've been "cleaned" by the ocean for a long time.
- drb91 8y agoGot a citation? Even better, you could put your plastic where your mouth is and try a diet of washed microplastics every meal to see how it affects you. It’s not immoral if you do it to yourself!
- RIMR 8y agoI know that plastics leach chemicals into water, but I have never heard of "water cleaned" plastics no longer leaching chemicals. It's also worth noting that consuming microplastics doesn't result in them being bathed in water, but rather our acidic digestive tract designed specifically for leaching chemicals out of things.
- subcosmos 8y agoyup - and some of these chemicals you certainly don't want leeching ...
- gruez 8y agohow do microplastics get into rock salt? since they're from ancient evaporated seas/lakes, shouldn't they be plastic free?
- falcolas 8y agoA number of salt mining techniques involves piping in water to dissolve the salt, then evaporating the water out of the salt.
- growlist 8y agoThis is how it used to be done in parts of Cheshire, which had the interesting effect of leaving large voids under parts of some towns and consequent subsidence. The solution was to effectively underpin whole areas by pumping in massive quantities of grout (a £28m job in y2k) whilst simultaneously pumping out the brine.
- slavik81 8y agoThe Lake Peigneur accident is an example of this happening very, very quickly. It's quite a thing to see: https://youtu.be/3cXnxGIDhOA https://youtu.be/3cXnxGIDhOA From Wikipedia: > On Thursday, November 20, 1980, an oil rig contracted by Texaco accidentally drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Company salt mine under the lake. [....] The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (26 ha) of the surrounding terrain. > The backwards flow of the normally outflowing Delcambre Canal temporarily created the biggest waterfall in Louisiana.
- CompelTechnic 8y agoThe title of the original article published in Environmental Science and Technology, along with a bit of the abstract: Global Pattern of Microplastics (MPs) in Commercial Food-Grade Salts: Sea Salt as an Indicator of Seawater MP Pollution A total of 39 different salt brands produced at geospatially different sites, including 28 sea salt brands from 16 countries/regions on six continents, were investigated. A wide range of MP content (in number of MPs per kg of salt; n/kg) was found: 0–1674 n/kg (excluding one outlier of 13 629 n/kg) in sea salts, 0–148 n/kg in rock salt, and 28–462 n/kg in lake salt. ------------------------- I would tend to think that if you want to avoid these microplastics, eat rock salt, not sea salt. Much lower concentration of microplastics, which I am suprised are even present at all, really. I don't imagine the rock salt producers are allowing a whole bunch of plastic manufacturing equipment to abrade directly into the product. Not really sure what the n/kg unit represents, though (is it nanograms per kilogram?).
- jfk13 8y ago> Not really sure what the n/kg unit represents, though Sounds like it's simply a count of the individual particles: "number of MPs per kg of salt".
- Amorymeltzer 8y ago>in number of MPs per kg of salt; n/kg MPs is microplastics, so in this case n is the number. So 13,629 individual microplastics per kilogram of salt, etc.
- BeniBoy 8y agoIt is available on sci-hub if anyone wants to have a closer look: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1021/acs.est.8b04180 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1021/acs.est.8b04180 From my understanding n is the number of microplastic fragments.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agon/kg looks to be "number of microplastic particles per kg". As you suggest, the rock salt microplastics are not caused by ocean microplastic pollution. So those numbers represent the "background noise", and if you will, microplastics found in sea salt are 20-30 dB above the "noise floor."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dharma1 8y agoWill biodegradable plastics solve plastic waste eventually? What are the main blockers stopping this from happening sooner rather than later?
- ekianjo 8y agoCosts, and the properties of different kind of plastics. There are thousands of different polymers used to make plastics, so just using an umbrella name for them all is not helpful to understand what they are.
- Nasrudith 8y agoAlso isn't biodegradability technically a feature in opposition to at least some of the uses like sanitary uses? Since by definition you don't want bacteria to be able to make it through. Granted for most applications "only" one hundred years would be more than sufficient.
- jazzyjackson 8y agoYou can search for "PLA vs ABS" - biodegradable vs permanent plastics and the main players in 3D printing so there's a lot written for a laymen audience about their pros and cons. LEGO is trying really hard to introduce biodegradable plastics into their product line and have written about the struggle to produce something that is as permanent as they want it to be (so you can hand your LEGOs down to your grandchildren) while making them from plant sources, which is different, but related. But basically all the resin / petro plastics win out in strength, durability, UV resistance, etc etc -- so there's a lot of products that can be made from bioplastics but you won't see fiberglass boat hulls being composted anytime soon.
- rdlecler1 8y agoWhat are the three brands? Is this list anywhere before the paywall?
- shironineja 8y agoIt is pervasive in our ecosystem. There is no escaping microplastics if you are part of the human experience. It is in the air you breathe: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468584417300119 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246858441... I wonder about our insect friends who have been recently disappearing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2018/09/29/microplastics-contaminate-half-of-all-freshwater-insects-study-shows/#5587835b6d38 https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2018/09/29/microp...
- hinkley 8y agoThe compost from the city yard waste collection facilities is full of pea sized pieces of plastic, especially produce code stickers. If there’s plastic I can see and pick out, you just know there’s a bunch you can’t. What do you suppose it would take to get plastic produce stickers banned in favor of biodegradable versions?
- bkosborne 8y agoI'm pretty sure that produce stickers are safe to consume (and thus biodegradable), at least in the US: https://www.advantagelabel.com/products-services/prime-labels/fda-compliant-labels/ https://www.advantagelabel.com/products-services/prime-label... (couldn't find a better source)
- jazzyjackson 8y agoSafe to consume doesn't mean biodegradable, likely it passes right through you. Goobingling around I see a few biodegradable produce stickers marketed as "not like those other nonbiodegrable produce stickers" but that's not conclusive either.
- hinkley 8y agoIf they are surviving commercial composting (high temperature) they are not biodegradable.
- tachyonbeam 8y ago
- subcosmos 8y agoThis is getting absolutely rediculous ... Epoxy resins may very well have created the Diabetes epidemic, with genetic data backing it. https://bit.ly/2J3Btq5 https://bit.ly/2J3Btq5 And the chemical used to make Teflon was dumped into the Mississippi river valley for years, leading to a spate of birth defects and other more common medical problems. Dupont paid hundreds of millions : https://bit.ly/2fFAw9Q https://bit.ly/2fFAw9Q Carlin had it right .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
- milesokeefe 8y agoNon-shortened: [0] https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plastic-measures-500cdf1fe528 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plas... [1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfl...
- pasbesoin 8y agoThank you. I agree, and I seem to recall other comments to this effect, in the past. The guidelines don't specifically mention URL shorteners, but they do ask posters to supply original sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. Personally, and as a suggestion for this site, I would extend that to ask that sources not be hidden behind a URL shortener. I want to see where I'm going; I also don't appreciate my click being tracked. I go "meta" on HN only reluctantly. But, I've noticed the increasing volume of comments on HN, and it seems worthwhile mentioning that HN has some different expectations than other sites. Expectations that have helped to keep the commentary elevated and on point, up to now. (I'm just another poster, here. The only basis for my comment is appreciating the quality of discussion here, and hoping it continues. Thanks.) P.S. Not sure why the downvotes, but ok. As far as I recall, there are many past cases where the use of URL shorteners has been discouraged. Somewhat akin to the advice to stick [PDF] in the submission title for links to PDF files. People don't like surprises. Or, in my case, mystery links.
- burlesona 8y agoThis kind of stuff makes me wonder if plastics are to us as lead was to the romans. To useful to avoid even though we know it has risks, but perhaps we don’t appreciate the risks fully... and it’s very difficult to precisely measure exposure or to know how much is safe. The world is complicated. :/
- astrodust 8y agoPeople laugh at how "stupid" the Romans were, just as we'll probably have a chuckle at our own expense about the sorts of plastics we used.
- awakeasleep 8y agoThere is a cool conspiratorial take on it. This plastic epidemic is not an accident- it's population control. Plastic is fundamentally tied to endocrine disrupting chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals interfere with testosterone, and reduce fertility. Furthermore, that reduction in fertility is passed down epigenetically, compounding with each generation. I don't understand why people waste their time imagining chemtrails when the plastic endocrine disruptor theory is so close at hand, and the consequence of it is easily proven. The only part that is a conspiracy is the part you can't prove anyway. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28842957 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28842957
- jazzyjackson 8y agoI find it more likely that plastic is just a dope material for cheap, durable manufacturing, but I do appreciate having another conspiracy to put in my pocket.
- i88y6 8y agoThere are definitely health risks. Look at all the bottles that have the "BPA-free" disclaimer on them.
- 8y ago
- polskibus 8y agoWhat about salt from salt mines? Is it safe?
- samirm 8y agoI'm assuming that's rock salt and it's mentioned in the article as having the least amount of microplastics on average.
- nstj 8y agoCorollary statistic: Microplastics found in 90% of HN posts
- CNJ7654 8y agoIt's estrogenic effects are readily apparent
- i_am_nomad 8y agoI’ve been feeling more and more guilty about my 3D printing hobby lately; possibly this is the last straw, and it’s now time for me to sell off my gear.
- ravenstine 8y agoWhy? Is it because you think your hobby is putting microplastics into the environment, or because you're helping to fund the plastic industry? I'm not criticizing you, but just wondering.
- i_am_nomad 8y agoThe former. Some studies have suggested that 3D printing is especially bad about emitting fine-particulate plastic.
- Xylakant 8y agoIf you’re concerned about that, just drive less. A recent study in germany asserts that the biggest chunk of microplastik is from car tires, which alone is responsible for about 1kg/person /year. You’ll have to 3D print a lot of stuff to get even close. (Sorry, german only) https://www.mdr.de/wissen/mehr-mikroplastik-durch-reifenabrieb-als-durch-kosmetik-und-kleidung-100.html https://www.mdr.de/wissen/mehr-mikroplastik-durch-reifenabri...
- i_am_nomad 8y agoThanks! As it is I barely drive at all, and clearly I wasn't really basing my concerns on actual data (and not for the first time).
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoYou need to join an Amish community to truly repent and disavow all plastic use.
- 8y ago
- choot 8y agoI use Himalayan Pink rock salt. It comes from Punjab. I wonder if it's affected too.
- DSingularity 8y ago“Microplastic content varies dramatically among different brand of salts and is especially high in those consumed in Asia. Based on an average microplastic content of 506 MP/kg for all salt samples including an Indonesian outlier sample, it’s estimated that an average adult consumes approximately 2,000 MPs per year through salt.” Need to find a micro plastic free salt ASAP.
- givan 8y agoWhy add a rock to your food just to enhance taste? Sodium is naturally present in all plants and meat no need for extra intake and besides that huge quantity of sodium that is taken from the salt that is added in every non sweet food messes up your body at cellular level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%2B/K%2B-ATPase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%2B/K%2B-ATPase
- damon_c 8y agoYou should reconsider this stance before you miss out on too much deliciousness.
- draw_down 8y agoCome on.
- goplusplus 8y agoWell for starters its a not a rock, its a mineral.
- Dylan16807 8y ago"Rock or stone is a natural substance, a solid aggregate of one or more minerals or mineraloids" Yeah sure.
- dmd 8y ago> Why add a rock to your food just to enhance taste? Didn't you just answer your own question?
- kazinator 8y ago> naturally present in all plants and meat no need for extra intake This is just plain misinformation. People who sweat a lot due to physical labour, exercise, or hot weather, require extra salt --- particularly if they eat a "clean" diet free of processed foods as you seem to advocate. Inadequate salt intake results in problems like fatigue/lethargy and muscle cramps. Animals also lick salt; supplementation with salt not some human-invented vice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_lick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_lick Salt is so important that it was used as currency once; that's why what you earn is still called a "salary".
- shobith 8y agoKurzgesagt had a nice video on plastics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7IzU2VJIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7IzU2VJIQ it is a scary situation!
- polymath21 8y agoIt seems increasingly likely with every one of these reports that our usage of plastics has lead to the large drop in sperm counts the last few decades: https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero Handmaid's tale, anyone?
- TaylorGood 8y agoSo what about all the salt found in foods we like? Are they a byproduct of other ingredients or using this contaminated salt?
- Proven 8y agoI've been wondering about the plastic taste lately ...
- NeoBasilisk 8y ago"But the free market..."
- purplezooey 8y agoThat site is horrible. It autoplays some loud video that talks about Sam Neil. Nearly made me jump out of my seat.