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Drinks in glass bottles contain more microplastics than those in other container
- robcohen 1y agoI don't get this. If paint is causing the problem, why not just stop painting the caps.
- nextos 1y agoBy looking at the article [1], it seems that the problem is very different depending on the beverage class. In case of water, both glass and plastic are quite clean in terms of microplastic particles. Beer (glass) seems to be heavily contaminated. If I'm reading this correctly, it seems that glass bottles are often paired with resin or PET-coated caps, which shed quite a lot of microparticles. [1] https://anses.hal.science/anses-05066642v1/file/Chaib_JFCA_2025.pdf https://anses.hal.science/anses-05066642v1/file/Chaib_JFCA_2...
- Groxx 1y agoNot sure we can conclude much there tbh, their own numbers and the numbers in other studies they mention show truly enormous ranges for their rather small sample sizes. Plus, if they're right and the contamination is mostly coming from cap damage, it'd vary immensely by the kind (and treatment) of the cap and luck on how much damage it got, and not the kind of bottle, even if they do currently correlate. So a useful study to say "stop painting the insides of caps, duh" but it hardly seems like anything intrinsic to the container. And hard to extrapolate to other areas which may not paint their caps, or anything that uses corks.
- card_zero 1y agoI don't think they're painting the insides, it sounds like the bottling machine has a hopper full of caps, and they rattle around in production and chip microscopic bits of paint off and those stick to the insides and everywhere, until washed off by the booze.
- Groxx 1y agoAh, yep, you're correct - I was misinterpreting the pictures in the paper. On rereading, they seem pretty clear about it being paint on the outside that somehow gets on the inner surface. Though also: >The results show that glass containers were more contaminated than other packaging for all beverages except wine, because wine bottles were closed with cork stoppers rather than metal caps. So yeah. Cap differences, probably for fashion more than function, which are probably easily remedied.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zeristor 1y agoThat’s the simple solution they were talking about.
- singleshot_ 1y agorust
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- capitainenemo 1y agoI suppose if the paint is the issue, glass bottles using the swing top metal hinge and rubber stopper method are fine?
- kokanee 1y agoThey said corks are fine. For grolsch tops, the kind of rubber might matter, I'd guess.
- giantg2 1y agoYeah, most rubbers today are actually plastics.
- GuB-42 1y agoNatural rubber is also plastic. We tend not to call naturally occurring polymers "plastics", but natural rubber is usually vulcanized, so it is not that natural. Natural rubber from tires is a significant source of microplastics (along with the other polymers the tire is made of)
- giantg2 1y agoI'm pretty sure tires are mostly synthetic at this point. I wonder if the natural rubber has a different safety profile than the synthetic, if it is more biodegradable, etc. Even traditional chewing gum fits the definition of plastic, but somehow it feels like it would be safer to use than modern synthetic plastic chewing gum. No idea if that's true
- capitainenemo 1y agoI kind of feel there'd be a difference between vulcanised tire rubber and my drink stopper, but I guess there might not be. Also, tires grating on road is probably a bit different a wear profile. Clearly someone needs to test microplastic shredding in container rubber. Oh well, at least they have some in that design with cork tipped plugs. It's a bit harder to find though.
- OutOfHere 1y agoThis article/study seems like FUD that was written squarely by the plastics industry. I think the lesson here is to use better bottle caps.
- esafak 1y agoANSES is the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety. It is a public administrative body reporting to the Ministries of Health, the Environment, Agriculture, and Labour. https://www.anses.fr/en/content/our-identity https://www.anses.fr/en/content/our-identity
- nerdponx 1y agoI can't speak specifically for this agency, but regulatory capture is very much a real thing.
- OutOfHere 1y agoAnd? The glass has nothing to do with it. It's all about the bottle caps which can be made of plutonium for all I know. It's misleading to suggest that it has anything to do with the glass.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoHowever, it is about bottle caps that are designed to go exclusively on glass bottles. I guess the headline could have read “Bottled drinks with caps that are designed to go on glass bottles ... ” That doesn’t seem like it would be misleading; it would also be less ambiguous than “bottle caps” which could suggest any cap to any bottle. (And it would be a rather obtuse way to phrase it.) Regardless, the headline seems to be literally accurate. Microplastics are indeed found in larger quantities in glass-bottled drinks than in plastic-bottled drinks. Those microplastics in glass-bottled drinks come from the paint on the designed-for-glass-bottles bottle cap.
- nothrowaways 1y agoExactly. Nothing to do with glass bottles.
- karim79 1y agoSo let's use cork to plug all containers. We can then worry about microcork instead. I'm pretty sure that would be safer and more sustainable.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoEven if cork is used, the adhesives it needs to stay in place can also be plastic, and shed microplastics. We better evolve to tolerate some level of microplastics because they're not going away any time soon. It's mind boggling how many microplastics sources are in modern civilization, and how hard it would be to eliminate say half of them.
- raylad 1y agoYou do know that the only way that evolution happens is that those organisms that don’t have the trait enabling them to survive, die off. We don’t just “evolve“ without massive deaths. Is that what you’re hoping for?
- eszed 1y agoDoes cork need adhesive to stay in place? I'm not doubting you, just had never heard that before. I thought the cork had enough friction with the glass on its own.
- nothrowaways 1y agoThis is a misleading, half backed, and click bait "finding". They didn't even identify if problem is the glass or stuff like pains around the glass.
- guelo 1y agoThey absolutely did identify it.
- jamessinghal 1y agoThe paper mentions in multiple places, including the abstract, that the cause of higher microplastics readings was likely from the bottle caps, given that the found microplastics matched the color and composition of the paint on the bottle caps.
- guelo 1y agoThis is a great finding by a public health organization which will result in simple changes in industry that benefit everybody. For us believers in government it's important to highlight public wins amid all the cynicism.
- Loughla 1y agoWant to bet nothing changes? Cynicism becomes realism at some point.
- sheepscreek 1y agoOkay - newsflash. Microplastics are everywhere already. In the water you drink from tap. In the wild caught (or farmed) fish you eat. Soon we’ll be told they are also present in the fruits and vegetables we eat, maybe even in milk and eggs! Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees. So yeah, sure, there are microplastics in drinks in glass bottles. But to say they contain “more” microplastics than plastic containers sounds like the BS concocted by packaging lobby. Here’s a fun fact: did you know that a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water! We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoThe comforts of modern life will take a very significant hit if we really want to undo our polluting way of life. It can be done, but many people will vote with their wallets to keep those comforts as long as possible, and companies will fight to earn that profit as long as they can. I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds.
- wpollock 1y ago> I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds. You mean like global warming and how the climate change catastrophe we are experiencing has changed human behavior to stop polluting? <sarcastic mode> I can't imagine that anything will change the minds of the majority of people to the point where they drastically change their lifestyles.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoWell, it's not a catastrophe until it affects you. It needs to severely hit a critical mass of the population in developed countries; and by that time it may be too late. Anything less than critical mass can be swept under the rug by governments until your term is over.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- flowerthoughts 1y agoDo we know how much (sub-)microplastics floats around in the atmosphere? Does it have a greenhouse effect?
- cassianoleal 1y agoYou probably mean nanoplastics. To be fair, I think almost every article that mentions microplastics mean nanoplastics. Microplastics seem to be defined in the milimetre range, so they should be well visible. https://thisvsthat.io/microplastics-vs-nanoplastics https://thisvsthat.io/microplastics-vs-nanoplastics