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According to US scientists, bottled water contains up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously thought.
They were able to find the tiny and invisible pieces of plastic, called nanoplastics, by examining the samples with lasers tuned to resonate with their specific molecules. Such research was conducted for the first time.
Surprise: There are microplastics in mine water, as studies from Ostrava have shown
Scientists have long assumed that there were many of these microscopic pieces of plastic, but until researchers at Columbia University and Rutgers University did the calculations, they had no idea how many there were or what type of particles they were.
110,000 to 400,000 particles per liter
Analyzing five samples each from three common – and unspecified – brands of bottled water, the researchers found that the amount of particles (both micro- and nanoplastics combined) ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per liter, with an average of about 240,000 .
Nanoplastics are particles smaller than a micrometer or micrometer (a micrometer is a derived unit of the SI system with a length of one millionth of a meter, sometimes called a micrometer – editor’s note). E.g. A human hair is about 83 micrometers wide.
Study results show that tap water contains plastic fibers
Previous studies have looked at slightly larger microplastics, ranging in size from five millimeters to one micrometer to the naked eye. A new study found that about 10 to 100 times more nanoplastics than microplastics were found in bottled water.
“A lot of the plastic appears to come from the bottle itself,” said the study’s lead author, Naixin Qian, a physical chemist at Columbia University.
However, experts cannot yet give a convincing answer to the crucial question of whether these plastic parts are really harmful to health. Research and further comparisons continue.
In 2020, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic drew attention to the possible risks of previously unknown nanoplastics. “In addition, micro- and nanoplastics cause oxidative stress, a form of cellular toxicity that can lead to cancer,” warned toxicologist and environmental chemist Tomáš Cajthaml from the Institute of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in his general discussion on nanoplastics.
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