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Scientists discover 100 to 1000 times more plastics in bottled water
- ImHereToVote 3y agoFrom the other thread: > "Previous studies found the major chemical composition to be PET, which is expected since the bottle is made of PET," Yan told us. "Therefore, for a long time, we had the impression that the majority of plastic particles inside bottled water would be Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) particles of a few hundred nanometers in size." > "That was incorrect," Yan said. > Ironically enough, the most commonly detected plastic was polyamide, a material commonly used in water filtration systems and "the most popular membrane material used in reverse osmosis … a common water purification method shared by all three brands [of water tested]," the team wrote in the paper. Too different from the title. And the other comments seem to have been written without reading the text.
- huytersd 3y agoPlastic is just a bad medium to store liquids in. I bet there are plenty of issues that will come up in the future with Nalgene bottles as well.
- froh 3y agothe article suggests the microplastics are not from the bottle.
- dottjt 3y agoWhen I think about it, you never see water come in a can. I guess cause people want to see the water.
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- ImHereToVote 3y agoWhat difference would that make? https://bioplasticsnews.com/2020/07/22/cans-sustainable-plastic-bottles/#:~:text=Coatings,from%20reacting%20with%20the%20metal https://bioplasticsnews.com/2020/07/22/cans-sustainable-plas....
- zoover2020 3y agoYou do see it in cartons, though. But these are also (partially) embedded with plastics so not that much better.
- thousandknives 3y agoI am from Austria, and here you can buy water in cans. It's not common, but lately, there are 2-3 brands that offer canned water, which you can find in a normal supermarket. On the other hand, I've never seen water in cartons in my life. But both cans and cartons are also lined with plastic on the inside, afaik. I was seeing "When Chinese Industrial Espionage Goes Wrong" [1] some months age, industrial espionage related to the inside coatings of the cans. Quite interesting video. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ojlJoM0FE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ojlJoM0FE
- whicks 3y agoHere in the southern United States, this brand of carton water is somewhat popular: https://boxedwaterisbetter.com/ https://boxedwaterisbetter.com/
- ssl-3 3y agoAluminum beverage cans are also lined with a thin layer of plastic that is sprayed inside after the can is formed. If they weren't this way, then acidic beverages would eat through the crazy-thin aluminum skin in fairly short order. It's also one of the things that the beverage can manufacturing industry tests for. All aluminum beverage cans are tested optically to detect and reject individual cans with holes in the metal that light can penetrate, and spot tests are also done using brine and electricity to detect metal exposure due to an incomplete plastic coating inside of the can (which can result in cans being rejected in batches of tens-of-thousands at once). (Given all of this, maybe we had it closer right with the returnable, reusable glass bottles that were previously used by the soda industry.)
- PaneradFisk 3y agoMade me remember this old video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW_DhjbHC-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW_DhjbHC-U no idea if it's still a thing or not though.
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- blurbleblurble 3y agoHere's an interesting canned water brand that's getting some popularity where I live: https://liquiddeath.com/ https://liquiddeath.com/ I still think it's too expensive though.
- sneak 3y agoLiquid Death is a unicorn, with a valuation higher than Replit last I looked. their whole thing is drinks. in cans.
- elefanten 3y agoThe name and brand styling are so atrocious though. Feels like an Ed Hardy t-shirt became a water bottle.
- Ancapistani 3y agoI agree, but they appear to be aware of the level of "cringe" their marketing puts out. I'd say they're the Limp Biskit of beverage companies. They are all in on the stereotype, without shame, while simultaneously making fun of themselves for it.
- filoleg 3y agoAnd on top of that, not just drinks, but mainly water, and now they also have sparkling water and tea. No idea how they did it, but mad props to them for somehow managing to make it this far on just water, and without backing of some other major beverage megacorp (like Coke or Pepsico), at least to my knowledge.
- hypercube33 3y agoDon't aluminum cans have a plastic liner?
- Out_of_Characte 3y agoAFAIK this depends on the acidity of the drink since carbonated drinks will destroy the can otherwise. Canned food has no such thing.
- ChatGTP 3y agoAlso seems like a status thing to have PET water. I have next to zero idea what the appeal is but it really seems popular to be cruising around with water in a PET bottle. I've used a re-usable double wall "Yeti" bottle for years and years, it's 100x superior to a plastic bottle, but yeah, the plastic bottles still win in popularity. I know of whole families who only drink out of PET bottles at home, ie they won't drink tap water, only from PET bottles. They go through tens of them a week. Anyway my point is, I bet this news will have almost no effect on bottled water sales.
- yetihehe 3y agoEveryone I know switches to sodastream for sparkling water and uses bottled water only when they have to have some non-sparkling water on the go. But sodastream still uses PET bottles, just more thick and reusable, so at least they don't have to buy so much bottled water.
- ChatGTP 3y agoI have one too, actually I do use PET bottles, but mostly because filling up isn't always easy. I get caught out sometimes and it's just easier to buy a drink.
- ecshafer 3y agoLifetime fitness sells a brand of water sold in a can in their cafe.
- j-bos 3y agoVoss sells water in glass, but it's a luxury good.
- wodenokoto 3y agoYou sometimes see it, but mostly at events. Last time I had canned water was expo2020. You can also get water in tetra pack paper containers. Again, I mostly see these at events where there is some reason to brand the water in an ecological fashion (had a pack that was imported from Norway to Dubai for cop28. I could really taste the sustainability in that one!)
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- user568439 3y agoAre Brita and similar filtering systems getting rid of the microplastics? I use it at home for the tap water bleach taste but I’m not sure if it has other benefits (or issues!)
- Aromasin 3y agoI'm quoting a journal article I read probably nigh on 5 years ago, but as far as I remember yes. It depends on the size, so it won't remove all but it will remove the vast majority.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoI have a brita and the storage container is plastic, so does that mean I get brand new micro plastic particles from the container post-filtering?
- red-iron-pine 3y agodepends on the plastic, some are better about leaching than others. plastics also photodegrade (instead of biodegrade), so putting that bad boy in direct sun may not only help grow algae (I'm on well water and filtering won't stop that) in there but also break the plastic down into your water. if you're serious about filtering look into in-line reverse osmosis systems.
- happytiger 3y agoA Brita filter will filter out something down to approximately 0.5 microns, and unfortunately microplastics get smaller than that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8563659/#:~:text=Currently%20it%20has%20been%20suggested,%3E1%20cm%20%5B11%5D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8563659/#:~:tex.... Once it gets down to a certain size, micro-plastic won't be filtered. So basically, and for clarity, my understanding is that microplastics get down to 1 μm, which is like .001mm and the standard Brita does something down to .005mm, so it can’t catch the smallest microplastics, but I assume it will help.
- tmaly 3y agoAny chance we could get non-carbonated water in glass again? I distinctly remember the water bottle in the Goonies being glass.
- happytiger 3y agoTap water through a charcoal filter to a stainless steel all-metal bottle works wonders and costs almost nothing a year — we love it in our house. There is so much plastic in food packaging it’s getting kinda hard to avoid.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIs the charcoal filter hooked up to the tap directly ?
- happytiger 3y agoWell we used to use a gigantic gravity filter from Berkey, and it was great! But I got tired of the extra work. So after a while I realized I could just put the entire in-house system through charcoal systems at the supply side (we lucked out and had a supply line for just the home available instead of just one mains — the builder split the lines and exposed the home one in the garage just for this use case so I lucked out) so I bought a canister carbon filter and a pre-filter and put it in. I change it about once a year and our water has been amazing. Every tap has super clean water coming out of it. I know this might not work everywhere but it’s been fantastic for us.
- avsteele 3y agoResearchers don’t yet know how dangerous tiny plastics are for human health. In a large review published in 2019, the World Health Organization said there wasn’t enough firm evidence linking microplastics in water to human health, but described an urgent need for further research Finding a connection between microplastics and health problems in humans is complicated — there are thousands of types of plastics, and over 10,000 chemicals used to manufacture them. But at a certain point, Mason said, policymakers and the public need to prepare for the possibility that the tiny plastics in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the clothes we wear have serious and dangerous effects. If the negative effects were very strong they would probably have found evidence in previous studies. There may be something here, but it isn't something worth worrying about much.
- kromem 3y agoIt took decades before there was finally the evidence we have today of the social impacts of leaded gasoline. Sometimes problems have such a broad scope that the impacts are normative across samples and analysis is very difficult. For example, we know something is at fault for why developed nations have such high and growing autoimmune diseases compared to less developed nations. But specifically what the culprit is eludes us. An argument from silence isn't a very compelling argument for the safety of microplastics.
- bheadmaster 3y ago> It took decades before there was finally the evidence we have today of the social impacts of leaded gasoline. True, but how many other things were hypothesized to be harmful, and turned out harmless? Can we even know the difference between the two beforehand? In order to worry about something, you need evidence of harm. If you worry without evidence, you worry about everything.
- j-bos 3y agoI don't think it's much of a stretch to be concerned about the presence of a relatively new set of compounds in one's drinking water.
- lakomen 3y agoBut carrying glass bottles upstairs into the 3rd story of the building every 2 days is hard. And, in Germany, there don't seem to be any 1L or 1.5L bottles, only 0.7L. I drink 3-4L a day sometimes even 5. That's 6 bottles of 12 just for me. And what micro-nano stuff is in those glas bottles? And what effect does it have on our bodies? I've been drinking bottled water all my life. I could imagine some circulatory health effects. Or it's too small to matter. In any case we're infested with plastic. Regarding what someone wrote about developed vs undeveloped countries health, we eat food with very little nutrients. There's this story about 1 or 2 Indian women coming to the UK, and developing nutrient deficiencies because the food in India, what they were used to, was normal, but the food in the UK was watered down, glasshouse mass produced crap that never even saw daylight and was full of chemicals. And it's not just the UK.
- yetihehe 3y agoWhy can't you drink tap water? I drink maybe 5 liters of bottled anything in a week.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoThere's a class thing to this - everyone I know who's working class refuses to drink tap water. Even if they're on a perfectly good system, it's 100% bottled water or soda all the time. Was told that "tap water is for broke people"
- j-bos 3y agoClass? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that many trusted municipal water systems have been reveales to have temporary or extended contamination?
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI asked! These are New Yorkers, we have good water. To your point though, there was an issue with lead in schools and in NYCHA that may be at play here.
- lakomen 3y agoBy the way: https://www.bund.net/themen/aktuelles/detail-aktuelles/news/pet-nanoplastik-gelangt-bis-ins-gehirn/ https://www.bund.net/themen/aktuelles/detail-aktuelles/news/... Nanoplastic from PET bottles, in animal tests, show it goes into the brain. German language article.
- mrich 3y agoJust buy glass bottles, tastes better anyway (or use tap water).
- ImHereToVote 3y agoThe article isn't suggesting that the plastic is from the bottles. So what difference would glass make?
- mrich 3y agoFrom the article: The new study found pieces of PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is what most plastic water bottles are made of, and polyamide, a type of plastic that is present in water filters. The researchers hypothesized that this means plastic is getting into the water both from the bottle and from the filtration process.
- difosfor 3y agoI'm happy to live in a country with good tap water. But I'm afraid by this time all of the water is already infested with plastic, including ground, river and rain water.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoBut the research says that the plastic isn't coming from the bottles. I wonder if tap has the same plastic contamination from filters that bottled water has.
- cosmotic 3y agoMore than... previously known? Non-bottled? Last year?