When it comes to good consumer habits , numerous ( and often contravene ) account have people question everything from theircoffee drinkingto theirphone utilisation , but until recently , curling up with a warm mug of tea seemed OK . Anew studymay alter that . As theCBCreports , sure type of tea bag could deposit billions of microplastic corpuscle into your tea .
Nathalie Tufenkji , who teaches chemical substance engineering at McGill University in Montreal , was inspire to investigate the plastic content of tea after ordering thehot beveragefrom a coffee shop one day . Instead of a classic , compostable theme tea leaf handbag , her tea leaf leaves make out bundled in a sac made from a silken material . The item was really made from credit card , and it was an object lesson of the " fancy " teabags made from nylon and PET ( polyethylene terephthalate ) that are gain popularity with sure tea brands .
So what does that have in mind for your cockcrow cup of tea ? According to the researchers ' work , published in the journalEnvironmental Science & Technology , steeping one of these bags in red-hot water system can put out up to 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles into your drink . Microplastics are miniscule plastic moment no freehanded than a dust mote , and nanoplastics are even modest . Even with billions of them swirl in your teacup , the mote add up to a total plastic subject matter of just one - sixtieth of a milligram .
Microplastics are n’t limit to fancy tea bags . Seafood , table salt , and even tap water all hold tiny patch of plastic . We consume so much of it that one subject notice we’reexcreting 20 particlesof the stuff and nonsense per every quarter pound of waste . But even in a world where microplastics are unavoidable , the number in this recent study are notable : Tea made from the plastic tea bags canvass containsthousands of timesmore charge card that what has been observed in other food products .
The study indicates that the plastic subject matter of some tea leaf is gamy , but it does n’t say what that means for your health . That ’s because no evidence yet show microplastics are harmful to human being when ingested . It ’s possible that the inauspicious wellness effect will become more apparent as the current population ages , but it ’s also possible that the human body deals with microplastics the same way it deal with otherenvironmental toxin .
The tea bag study also come with some caution : The researchers looked at only four tea bag ( and an additional four were used as ascendance ) , so a larger sample size may have divulge that this level of microplastic subject matter is n’t found in all tea made from credit card - base bags . If you ’d still prefer to keep off mixing charge card with raging beverages , look for tea steel that expend biodegradable newspaper publisher and steer clear of Great Pyramid - shaped bags and other pouches made from silky internet textile . Not only are report bags lower in plastic contamination , but they also add less dissipation to the surroundings .
[ h / tCBC ]
