3 ms·
> I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container. Is
by crazygringo 2y ago
> I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container.
Is it? The mesh bag goes through basically zero abrasion at less than 100°C. It just sits there in the mostly still water.
Meanwhile, the plastic container might be in contact with fatty food way over 100°C. It gets scraped by pointy utensils. It gets abraded by a cleaning pad. It gets scratched and cloudy. It gets used hundreds of times.
I'd be guessing the plastic container sheds orders of magnitude more microplastics.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI'd be interested in seeing this measured. Probably it depends on how much abuse the plastic container receives. I don't think mine ever come in contact with something > 50°C, and the dish scraper I use isn't very pointy, but ymmv. The reason I'm sticking with the tea-bag as the greater contributor is that I expect that the likelihood of a given region of plastic detaching and being washed into food/drink is related to: - how closely the overall piece resembles a sphere and how large that sphere is (e.g. whiskers are likely to be knocked off, whereas the center of a sphere is unlikely to be dug out - whether it has ever gone through this kind of treatment before Sort of like how when eating a donut covered in powered sugar 95% of the mess happens within the first second of handling it.