I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? How does that compare with microplastics entering our food and drink from the plastic-lined paper cups we drink hot tea and coffee out of, from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in, from the bottled water that sits inside plastic for months, from all of the plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens, from the disposable serrated plastic knife we might use at an event to cut our chicken, and so forth? Why tea bags?
Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else? Surely if you brew tea in a wooden container, "microwood" particles are entering the drink. Surely when you scrape your stainless steel spatula against your stainless steel skillet making scrambled eggs, "microsteel" particles are embedded in your eggs. How does the body deal with micro-everything? Is there any reason to think plastic is more harmful? Is there any specific supposed health consequence, like a specific type of cancer or increased aging or something?
"Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food. "Microsteel" is just elemental iron which is a necessary nutrient.
Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don't exist in nature. They're similar to cellulose but no organisms exist that eat them. They're believed to be nonreactive and therefore harmless but they might bioaccumulate which could be bad, or they might react with things in our bodies in unknown circumstances. We have limited experience with these molecules so it is hard to say.
Missing from this answer is the early evidence that they may be _very_ harmful. Early evidence suggests they are not non-reactive. They disrupt many of the body's systems in ways we're only beginning to understand.
> Various examples of damage caused by microplastics have been reported, such as microplastic accumulation in the bodies of marine and aquatic organisms (leading to malnutrition), inflammation, reduced fertility, and mortality. The threats that microplastics present to the human body have not yet been clearly identified. However, previous reports have shown that ultrafine microplastic absorption resulted in complex toxicity in zebrafish,2 and that microplastics under 100 nm in size can reach almost all organs after entering the human body.3 Therefore, concerns exist regarding the negative effects of continuous microplastic accumulation in the human body.
> Microplastics have been found in a variety of organisms and multiple parts of the human body. We emphasize the potential impact of microplastics on the early exposure of infants and the early development of embryos. At present, the toxicity research on microplastics show that the exposure will cause intestinal injury, liver infection, flora imbalance, lipid accumulation, and then lead to metabolic disorder. In addition, the microplastic exposure increases the expression of inflammatory factors, inhibits the activity of acetylcholinesterase, reduces the quality of germ cells, and affects embryo development. At last, we speculate that the exposure of microplastics may be related to the formation of various chronic diseases.
So...perhaps worthy of further study, maybe including to understand where exposure comes from, and whether the particles are absorbed? Like this study.
Unclear doesn't mean safe, it just means hard to quantify. Your child could be in a car accident and their survival odds could be unclear, scientifically speaking. Doesn't mean "totally safe."
This is the wrong analogy because the article states that there's only theoretical harm. It could mean that one has to drink from 100 tea bags a day to get any adverse effects.
It’s reasonable for people to take either approach: are microplastics more like asbestos or are they more like cellulose in terms of harm?
The answer being unclear means it makes sense to treat them, from a regulatory standpoint, closer to asbestos. It also makes sense to treat them as an unknowable and not regulate, because any alternative might be worse.
But it does point to there being a dearth in research and answers, and we should solve that as quickly as possible and maybe limit our exposure when viable, known to be non-toxic alternatives exist.
>The answer being unclear means it makes sense to treat them, from a regulatory standpoint, closer to asbestos.
I'm not sure the follows logically, it ignores a bunch of known facts about biology to imagine that there is a pathway for these to cause major issues.
Damage that is bad enough becomes easy to quantify, so no, "unclear" actually does put a bound on it.
Survival odds in car crashes demonstrate this nicely: count the outcomes and divide. If "the survival odds were unclear, scientifically speaking" then car accidents would have to be orders of magnitude more rare and less lethal than they are.
Sudden damage that is bad enough is easy to quantify. You should take a look at the decades long struggle to prove that cigarettes are harmful to see what it is like when the harm is chronic.
Was the most important part of all the tobacco research the bits that said “Smoking tobacco is healthy”? Or the studies of lead in gasoline the caveats that said “These are small samples”?
It removes the possibility of fear mongering. I'm not aware of any modern research where smoking anything is claimed to be healthy, nor anything about lead in gasoline being too insignificant to pose a health risk.
What is that supposed to mean? Most science is based on theories but you don’t wait for the Theory of Everything to take learnings of science. Fear is a very useful emotion and you shouldn’t fear it.
You are mistaking "theories" and "hypotheses". Theory in science is not some wild shot in the dark, imagined by some random guy in the eureka moment. And neither it is a something yet unproven. Theories in sciences are usually sufficiently proven and stand on the other previously proven theories. Like for example evolution of species is a theory, despite it having more than a century of research and hard proofs. So yeah, science is based on theories, but not on a collection of lucky guesses.
Now hypothesis is what you were probably mistaking a theory with. A hypothesis is something unproven and may or may not be a real thing.
I did mistaken those, thank you for pointing that out. My point remains that science operates in the real world, where decisions often have to be made based on incomplete evidence, rather than waiting for certainty.
I won't speak for the whole world, but the amount of plastic things around me increased by a couple orders of magnitude in the last 15-20 years. What used to be made of stainless steel, wood or paper is now often made of plastic: tea kettles, dishes, water pipes, food bags, etc. etc. We'll see what effects it has in another 15-20 years when it will be too late to do anything.
'Plastic' is a loaded term. It includes lots of different types of platic, as well as intentional (plasticizers) and unintentional (residue in recycled plastic) additives to it. Some of the formulations are fairly new, some have been in use for a long time.
The amount of exposure has also changed. Some bakelite knobs on your armoir aren't a big deal. Sleeping with a 'fleece' blanket and inhaling polypropylene all night every night may not be fine.
Personally, I don't have confidence in being able to be an informed consumer of plastics, and it's easier to just minimize platic use in general without trying to decide what's dangerous and what's ok.
That's overly simplistic. The negative health effects might be lagging, because when plastic was invented there were zero micro plastics in the environment and now there are lots.
To wit, life expectancies in North America have been declining the last few years.
I see your point, but I suspect it's at least equally valid to assert that our average lifespans also fell due to COVID. Mortality isn't the only impact it had, and long term effects linger.
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't but the fact remains it's overly simplistic to assume that plastic production doesn't temporally lead changes in health effects by some amount.
It's almost like life expectancies cannot be explained by a single variable, and the original claim that life expectancies went up thus plastics aren't bad is overly simplistic. Imagine that.
Actually, it's not even that as most of the modern increase in life expectancy / fall in mortality occurred before the invention of plastics.
The former largely concluded by the 1920s. Plastics were largely invented during the 1930s, and were introduced as products over subsequent decades, at an ever-increasing rate.
Which is to say: whatever lead to the increase in life expectancy was largely not plastics. Rather it was increased general hygiene, sanitation, food quality, refrigeration, waste removal, and sewerage systems.
I'd mentioned this only a few months back, note especially my follow-up comment which similarly points out another frequently-touted factor which also fails the temporal sequencing test:
I'm not saying it's harmless, I'm saying that even if it is harmful it's not by enough to justify the panic and sudden lifestyle changes these articles sometimes lead to.
Remember the black spatulas a while back, and how it turned out to be a math error?
Is scooping out your food out of the crappy plastic takeout container into a bowl before microwaving an example of “panic and sudden lifestyle changes”?
Seems like a pretty minor change to me. I’m already going out of my way to not put metal in there anyway…
Humans existed. They had an average life expectency of 'x'. Then we introduced plastic. The life expectency became x+y.
We cannot say that plastic caused the increase, but it is clear that any decrease was small enough to be hidden by other factors.
Am I saying that it's harmless? No. Am I saying that your effort and attention are better spent checking your fire extinguishers arent expired or that your brake pads don't need changed? Yes. Those things have significant and obvious impacts on your survival odds. This does not.
> but it is clear that any decrease was small enough to be hidden by other factors.
Yes, but those "other factors" being antibiotics and vaccine, it turns out that even the deadliest pollutants we know were hidden by other factors, so it really gives us no idea about how harmful it is, as it could go from "harmless" to "cause millions of death every year" that's why I say the argument makes no sense.
> Am I saying that your effort and attention are better spent checking your fire extinguishers arent expired or that your brake pads don't need changed? Those things have significant and obvious impacts on your survival odds. This does not.
That's the problem, you cannot make this conclusion at all, it could be much worse than those two while still being hidden in longevity statistics, just because antibiotics and vaccine has so strong of an effect on life expectancy! Having no fire extinguisher at home has pretty much no impact on your life expectancy, but at the time plastics were introduced a significant fraction of the newborn didn't reach 10yo because they died of an infection of some sort.
> it could be much worse than those two while still being hidden in longevity statistics
I see what you mean, and I think we're basically coming at the same point from different angles. If you are a medical researcher or involved in crafting legislation this is probably important. You could help save millions of lives in aggregate. However, I'm suggesting that individual people should think of the opportunity cost before they panic. After all, a person can only worry about so many things and almost everyone is at or past their capacity.
To use another half baked example, if plastics take away a year, and antibiotics give you 5 extra you still win. However, if smoking cigarettes, obesity, or driving too fast risk taking away 10 years, start with one of those first.
Optimizing the bits of life that are too small to reliably measure is just not a great way to live, unless you've already handled all of the low hanging fruit in your life. Anxiety kills people too.
The reason for "why microplastics?" is because human use of everyday objects are more plastic than wood or steel. The reason for "why teabags?" is because of previous studies and because I think tea makes it to the top five of the most ingested liquid list.
I seem to recall a recent study of microplastic levels in a general population, where people with higher microplastic levels seemed to be tea drinkers, which took some by surprise at the time. I think the population under study was from latin america, if I'm not mistaken. Since this study now has flooded the search results, I'm having trouble finding that specific study.
Be that as it may, it's likely that there is a focus on tea because tea-drinkers scored high on microplastics in previous studies.
> The reason for "why microplastics?" is because human use of everyday objects are more plastic than wood or steel.
Over the past few decades there has been a trend for plastic based materials
replacing natural materials in everyday things.
Polyester textiles: Found in most clothing, bedding, and furniture upholstery.
Polyurethane coatings: Applied on wooden furniture to give it a glossy, durable finish.
Vinyl flooring and tiles: Replacing traditional wood or ceramic options in many homes.
Nylon carpets and rugs.
Synthetic leather (PU or PVC): Found in everything from sofas to shoes, replacing genuine leather.
It's got to a point where it's now hard to find natural materials in some categories. My wife was looking for a new sweater and most shops only had polyester or acrylic.
> "Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food.
This is one thing that confused me about the first article I saw on this. The paper lists three things it detected, one being cellulose, and various articles will list them all together as if they're just three microplastics to be worried about.
The paper seems to encourage this reading with this line: "the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer"[0].
Was sample 3 completely fine? If so, why is say "Nanoplastics were obtained from three teabag brands during a standard preparation"? Are they classing cellulose as nanoplastics?
Can the body break down cellulose though? It can't digest it at least. And do reactions that could use naturally occurring iron compounds work with steel alloys designed to be non-reactive?
I think something else that doesn't get mentioned is it's not just the risk of microplastics reacting, the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically. So nonreactive shouldn't be taken to imply harmless.
TBH I can't remember what I was looking up when I first read about that (I feel like it was metals, glass, or cellulose again), but https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2104610118 seems pertinent:
> In general, mechanical interactions of microparticles and nanoparticles on biological membranes are vaguely studied, despite their importance for biological systems (29, 41). Hereby, we will demonstrate that these microplastics induce a mechanical stress of model cell membrane without the need of indirect assumptions about biological pathways (26, 27).
No, it can't. Cellulose is the main type of insoluble dietary fiber, and is in leafy vegetables, beans, peas, and many other foods. It's widely accepted as being good for digestion. Too much fiber can cause constipation and gas, but most people probably don't get enough fiber, so that's rarely a problem.
> How does that compare with ... plastic-lined paper cups .. cling wrap that covers our food as we heat ... the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in ... bottled water that sits inside plastic for months ... plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens ... disposable serrated plastic knife...
For myself, I don't do any of the above (with the possible exception of the last one once in a while). I thought everyone knew those were a bad idea.
I do drink tea using tea bags though — and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved.
The research specifically deals with cellulose bags which are often sealed with glues containing synthetic polymers.
The picture from the study of the cellulose bags show a round “pillow” style bag which is likely sealed with a glue, unlike some cellulose bags which are folded and stapled:
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.
So while polypropylene is the worst of the three by an order of magnitude, the cellulose pillow-style bag still leaches a large number of particles.
Notably, the authors tested OEM empty teabags for polypropylene and nylon, but chose a supermarket brand of cellulose pillow-style bags with tea still inside.
This discussion is complicated by the loose (ha!) definition of tea bags. There’s about a million different tea bags. Some use denser paper, some are thin. Some are stapled, some are pressed. Some are stringed and some are not. Some are single-use cotton (which I learned about when a local tea brand stopped using them due to cost).
Lipton makes a premium brand that uses a tetrahedral shaped micro-perforated plastic bag that very much could be shedding microplastics.
It’s hard to have a discussion without a clear definition and terminology.
Most teabags I use now don't split (some imported brands you have to be careful with), these are just regular looking ones not the fine mesh ones used by premium brands. I can jam them against the side of the cup to squeeze out liquid before removing the bag and they almost never split.
I'd say these extra strong bags have become common in the last 15 years in the UK. How they are strengthened I'm not sure, but my parents compost most of their food waste and they reckon worms now push teabags to the top of the compost bin, when previously they would just disappear with everything else and never be seen again.
There was a different study earlier this year on hacker news about the storage items - cling wrap and plastic containers, those materials all leach into food at different rates depending upon the temperature, acidity of food, and length of exposure contact - hotter and more acidic and longer means more leaching. It's non-zero but the danger level is anyone's guess at this point.
Just FYI, you can buy stainless steel loose leaf tea infusers. They don't cost a lot ($6->$15) and loose leaf tea is shockingly cheap. Just get a nice airtight container and some moister absorbing packets and you'll have great tea for a while.
I bought like 1lbs ~2 years ago for about $20 and still haven't worked all the way through it :D.
I will also say that loose leaf is an order of magnitude better tasting than bagged tea. The crush-tear-curl process of bagged tea will elicit a bitter brew from anything that isn't black tea, and lose a lot of its flavor. Not to mention they're likely using the leftover chaff from loose leaf production.
I like to show friends a properly brewed Dragonwell green tea and a bug-bitten oolong to convert them to the loose leaf way.
If you've not already gotten it, this is the next purchase I'd recommend [1]. Nothing better than instant hot water at the right temp :D. Doesn't take hardly any power to run either.
I picked up a couple of these at IKEA years ago. Sets on the lip of most mugs for brewing and then can be removed and placed in its holder to contain drips.
Do you never consume canned goods? Cans for soda are lined with a plastic. Same for vegetables.
Never mind the clothes that you wear. Or the dishwasher that cleans the dishes.
Plastics have grown to be basically everywhere. Precautions are good. Same for studies. And we may find alternatives. But a lot of the fear around them does feel excessive.
I've no idea why they chose teabags to study - one has to start somewhere, presumably - but I can answer the second question. The distinctive feature of plastics is the synthetic polymers that they contain, which classically feature bonds between oxygen atoms. These are extremely difficult for any organic process to break apart. Wood, however, can even be digested in small quantities, so 'microwood' will just break down into its constituent parts in the human body. The body can cope with metals and indeed has evolved to require a small amount, for instance in hemoglobin.
We aren't fully aware of the implications of microplastics on health, but the main cause for concern is that we have no easy way of getting them out (either naturally or medically) in the event that they are harmful.
I think they are a pretty reasonable thing to study. Teabags are porous plastic subjected to high heat. So the question has to be "what happens when these plastic baggies get exposed to high levels of heat? Does that liberate some of the plastic into the drink?"
Particularly worthy because tea is one of the most common beverages consumed.
We do know that microplastics may be reducing male fertility. I know there are others but I haven't done a ton of research [1]. Wood and stainless steel are different because we have evolved with these materials in our surroundings or at least something close to them. Also, wood, and even metals, do not have the staying power of plastic. We already do know that heavy metals are bad if they stick around in your body, but we do need metals in our diets as nutrients as well.
It should be assumed that anything that we have invented in the last 200 years should be guilty until proven innocent at this point imo. So many of the "modern marvels" have shown to have horrible health effects.
The dangers of sawdust (micro wood?) vary from species of tree to tree, but are generally well known and studied. in particular Manchineel and Yew are known to be dangerous.
Wood in its natural state is not a safe substance. African Mahogany for example is highly toxic, causing dermatitis, respiratory issues, giddiness, vomiting, boils, asthma, headaches, and nosebleeds. Has also been linked to nasal cancer.
I didn't say that we know that they are reducing male fertility, we know that it's very possible. I could have said it probably does. But I'm not a scientist so I'm not going to.
We know it's very possible is a very wishywashy comment though.
Best I can say is that there are theories, but we don't know if they are true or not yet. Some people think they are, some people disagree. That's why they are not facts.
If you microwave your consumables in plastic that is on you. Microwavable plastic is a marketing myth. Put your food on a plate or bowl and cover it with a wet paper towel.
It is absolutely not on you. In order to function as an adult you need to be able to have some level of trust in your family, your society, and your government (depending on where you live, I guess). That doesn't mean blindly believing everything you hear, but it does mean not having to do novel scientific research to confirm everything you were ever taught.
The majority of people alive on Earth today grew up in a world where plastic packaging and containers were a common, completely accepted part of life. Research suggesting this is harmful is very new, and still not settled. You cannot blame anyone for not picking this random ubiquitous aspect of modern life and avoiding it because it might be bad for them. Home microwaves themselves are no older than home plastics - why do you trust them?
It is likely that most people do not pay much attention to whatever chemistry they learn in school, but at least I would have never trusted any plastic object to be in contact with food inside a microwave oven, even decades ago, when I was much less careful about contact between plastic and food at room temperature.
There has never been any reason to not trust microwaves themselves with food, because any undesirable effects caused by them cannot be worse than when heating food is done using traditional methods, at temperatures that are normally higher and much less controlled.
On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
There may be a few plastics that could really resist in a microwave oven without degradation, e.g. PEEK, but those are very expensive and they will never be used for a cheap article like a food container.
Already since a few decades ago, since I have first used a microwave oven, I have never used anything else but glass vessels covered with glass lids and I have always been astonished whenever I have seen or heard somewhere that there exist people who have the courage to put food in microwave oven in plastic containers, even if their vendor has the guts to say that this should be safe.
There is really no excuse for using plastic for heating food, as the only supposed advantage is being able to dump the plastic container without washing it, but the glass vessels used for heating food in a microwave oven are very easy to wash, much easier than washing vessels that have been used for traditional cooking or food heating.
What did you learn in high school chemistry that made you suspicious of plastic? I did pay attention and I don't think I remember us covering plastic at all.
> On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
How do you know this? Even as someone actively looking into this topic I'm not sure whether this is true. I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely asking where to learn about this.
They also grew up in a world that was skeptical of plastics and chose to ignore the skepticism because not being skeptical and blindly trusting your family, society, government is a fools errand. The exact issue is people promoting this “well I shouldn’t have to think/research” way of life. That’s just nonsense and the reason we’re here. It’s a cute dream but ignorance will just kill you.
I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I don't agree that there was any widespread skepticism of the health impacts of plastic until very recently, maybe the last 5 years. There has certainly been broad concern about plastic trash and environmental pollution for a long time, but that's a different topic.
I stand by my claim that you and I should not have to research the health impacts of, for example, microwaves. We should have to think about it, but if you have a basic understanding of how they work and how to use them safely, and you listen to people who might tell you if there were an issue (friends, the news, the FDA, etc.), then that is enough. And when I say "how to use them safely", I don't mean doing your own experimentation to find the limits of the device. I mean being told not to put metal in it, maybe watching a video to see what happens if you do, and accepting that it's a bad idea and you won't do it. It is not possible for me to do a medical study on the impacts of eating microwaved food, but I have enough societal trust that I continue to use them anyway.
I guess it depends on what segment of society you exist in. I (born in the early 90s) was raised in a plastic-free lifestyle, and many of the people my family associates with are the same. We are staunch environmentalists though, so I guess my experience is not typical. So, I don’t know about “widespread”, but the current of thought has been present in the zeitgeist for decades.
Was that about health concerns, or pollution and environmental concerns? Obviously health and the environment are very related, but what I mean is that even the term "microplastic" didn't exist when you were born, and I thought the idea that consumption of or close contact with plastic could cause individual health problems was relatively new. Not that literally nobody had thought of it, but my impression is that pushback against plastic for most of its history was driven by giant piles of trash that don't biodegrade, turtles getting stuck in soda packaging, stuff like that.
Plastic is made from oil, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe people never were skeptical of plastics and that skepticism wasn’t covered up by lobbying.
Yes of course, and lobbyists can be very effective. They covered up climate change and the harms of smoking too. I'm sure there are things that (almost) nobody knows today because of corporate cover-ups that we'll discover in 10 years. Climate change didn't enter the public consciousness until the late 80s, decades after the basic science was well-established, and it took more decades for it to become something that "everyone" knew about. That's the fault of corporations and lobbyists, not individuals that were too lazy to do their own climate modeling.
It is obvious to me that smoking is bad for you, it feels like an intuitive fact that nobody should have to be taught, but that's because I grew up in a culture absolutely saturated with that idea, and I didn't know anyone that smoked. Somebody who grew up 70 years ago in the complete opposite culture can't be blamed for not knowing at the time that smoking causes lung cancer. How could they know? Nobody can follow cutting-edge research from every field on the planet and adjust their life accordingly. Even if you could it wouldn't help - cutting edge science is often contradictory and it takes time for a consensus and convincing body of evidence to build up. I'm sure both of us hold intuitively obvious beliefs that we'll realize are wrong in 20 years.
What is the solution? It's not helpful to wait until after a coverup is exposed and then blame every individual who didn't somehow figure it out on their own. You also can't just believe the opposite of everything you've ever been told - you'll have the same problem. Some things that corporations produce are actually good for you, lobbyists are occasionally paid to promote something useful and true. Your parents were probably right about a lot of stuff they taught you. You can and should ask questions and learn as much as you can, but life is complicated, nobody can be deeply educated about every single thing they touch.
We have a set of reusable silicone lids. They can withstand high temperature on stove or microwave and just rinse off. Hopefully they aren't found to release anything.
Instead of a paper towel, we throw food on a plate or bowl and drop a lid on it. This also works in the fridge; one less thing to wash and nothing disposed.
I'm sure they are good, but you and I have quite different levels of "very affordable." On Amazon, they seem to average around $10 each depending on size. Contrast with mason jars at a little more than $1 each at my local Menards plus a bit more for reusable lids or silicone gaskets.
But is it? How confident are you that this is your greatest exposure? Odds are there is something else in your life at least 100x as bad. And what does it mean that cellulose, a naturally occurring compound, releases 15x more microplastics than nylon? Or does iy? This study didn’t measure nanoplastics.
That’s what a lack of context does. No harm in just avoiding anything any study has found to be potentially harmful (especially tea bags, which are a crime against good tea and easily replaced). But… it’s impossible to know if this is the equivalent of stopping smoking, or of brushing teeth three times a day instead of two.
how do we find the 100x as bad thing if we do not do research like this. The authors did not write this to provide you with a guide for life, they are instead trying to increase our collective knowledge. I wonder sometimes if folks understand how science works.
You never have food or drink that was stored or served via plastic containers? How? I ask seriously - how do you live your life to entirely avoid this, while also not living a life so separate from society that you are drinking tea made from tea bags?
Many people drink tea not from tea bags to the point that "many" isn't really descriptive enough. If you're a tea aficionado, you definitely don't. Which means there's an entire market of people doing things like an aficionado even if they are not; see audiophiles. Only mass market large brands push the tea bag. Good tea comes packaged as loose leaf meant to be used in whatever strainer you have.
Restaurants, etc use stainless steel for heating, not plastic. To-go containers often have plastic and should be avoided but should not get to their melting point.
Lose leaf tea is much better anyway. You can get multiple infusions out of it which is nice if you don't need the caffeine the second time around (it's quite water soluble and mostly all goes in the first infusion).
A second infusion with bags always just ends up kinda watery and sad. Something about the leaves being smaller...
Look up "gongfu steeping", it is a well established method, e.g. "15 to 30 seconds for the first infusion, then add 10 seconds to each subsequent infusion. If it seems a bit weak, leave it for longer."
Most tea bags that you purchase anywhere use some level of plastics in their component materials and/or binding (especially this latter). The only safe options are metal strainers that you filter the tea with (and that hopefully don't have coatings on them that are harmful... boiling a new one would not be a bad idea before first use) or just loose leaf.
In the study, they put 300 nylon/plastic bags into 1L of near-boiling water. Many bags are paper derivatives and not plastic. No need to completely stop enjoying tea.
I'm not deeply into that topic, but the pan I use that's made of iron was 'burned-in' using linseed oil several times to create a non-sticky surface. Whatever that has as negative side-effects aside, that layer might trap the iron additives quite effectively.
It is well established that heating plastic in a culinary context distributes significantly more microplastic into your food.
Microplastics are also well established endocrine disrupters.
Microplastics cross the blood brain barrier and may also permanently stay in your body.
To what extent are these harmful? In what dose, over how much time? I don’t think that’s established. You could be cautionary, or wait for more science about how long it takes to reduce your fertility. It may also be inescapable, plastic is likely a permanent earth pollutant now, in your clothes, dust in the air, food, water, and most things in your home, including ones you abrasives use inside your body, like toothbrushes. Maybe only very high doses (like drinking tea from teabags once a day) have a detrimental health effect. Many compounds are lethal in high doses, and healthy, benign, or required for survival in low doses.
I absolutely agree that meaningful context would be helpful, but I don't see that as disqualifying. I appreciate that research is opportunistic, as often oriented toward discovery of new things not yet understood, as much about building up our factual understanding as interpretation.
So sure, I want context, but I think this kind of exasperation is a bit misplaced, as I don't think the article or the research itself was intended to be a comprehensive account of the broader contexts you are looking for. If it was masquerading as such a thing, I would be in full agreement. So I think it's a fair point in general, but the way you are saying it here sounds an awful lot like you're holding up a stop sign and saying "don't do any more research!"
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.
Also once you put your mind to it it's actually pretty easy to avoid most of the things you mentioned. There are glass or metal alternatives to pretty much everything plastic. Maybe not for creating an airtight seal over something like leftovers, but I think it's reasonable to expect that the food can sit in glass and have a plastic roof and still be relatively free of microplastics.
More research is needed it seems pretty plausible that plastics, like asbestos, are only a hazard when friable.
> 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.
I'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.
> ”from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in”
You shouldn’t really be doing either of those things. Plastic tupperware will get damaged from heat if you use it in the microwave frequently, potentially contaminating your food.
It’s best to transfer food to a heat-safe container (glass or ceramic) before microwaving. And definitely don’t use cling film in the microwave!
>First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
>Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
Not sure I understand your criticism. I think choosing tea bags and microplastics in particular is a way to 'ground' a study and experiments into something practical, rather than something too broad, abstract, and/or un-relatable to consumers.
I eat processed, ready-to-eat stuff at home, heavily use microwave for heating, but I don't do/use any of the things you mentioned. I generally prefer loose leaf tea, but sometimes tea bags are easier, so I only buy brands that use natural tea bags. It's possible to reduce exposure to pollutants if you're willing to sacrifice some convenience.
If one had to study the entirety of a subject it would be impossible to do so in many cases. It is entirely reasonable for a researcher to pick one piece of the puzzle and study that. No it does not give the entire picture but it may help us understand the greater picture.
Lastly if this was anywhere else besides HN there is a microwood entering you joke to be made.
> First of all, what’s with the focus on tea bags?
Well, lucky for you, there's an entire scientific study detailing why they chose to study it and the methodologies they used. You know, the one linked in the article. It states:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans.
And this is just a snippet! Much more detail and context available within! The wonders of original sources.
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
The cited Banaei et al., 2023[1] says "At this point, special attention should be paid to the release of MNPLs from the herbal/teabags, since during the soaking and steering processes, some MNPLs inevitably detach and migrate to the water solution", citing [2]...which is retracted with this explanation: "2 of the reviews for this manuscript were fictitious. 2 reviews were submitted under the name of known scientists without their knowledge."
So, yeah. Sometimes it's interesting to follow citation chains a few steps.
This study does not specifically mention paper tee bags. It mentions food contact paper but that’s something different.
In Germany paper tea bags are made out of natural fiber without glue.
But I would really like to know if this paper tea bags also release hefty amounts of microplastics, if somebody has a study please link.
That those plastic tea bags are microplastic hell should have been obvious from the start. The first time I saw them until forever I will avoid them.
Agreed. While some people are nit picking the comment here as “well don’t do any of those things,” it still doesn’t quantify the danger.
Recently read from “Made to Stick”: “Don’t just say popcorn has 40g of trans fats. Everyone knows trans fats are bad, but how bad is bad? Say popcorn has more trans fats in one serving than a whole day of greasy junk food”
I mean, why not? I get your point but before wide encompassing studies and meta studies, a lot of things will be looked at because we can look at them. It's like asking why investigate dolphin language instead of all animal communication.
These are all questions that are pretty easy to answer these days; perfectly appropriate for asking to an LLM or search engine.
Long story shot - yes, this is a major problem. Yes, you're getting it from bottled water and plastic utensils and plastic lined cups. No, it's not like microwood.
This shit is being found in every organ of our bodies from our sex organs to our brains. It's found in most wild animal samples, it's found in rain, it's found on Everest's peak and in the Mariana Trench. And every indication is that it's getting rapidly worse, scaling up with our ever-increasing plastic production.
And there are perfectly good alternatives for the vast majority of this use, but the costs are a bit higher (since they're not being externalized onto the planet and our organs as much).
From the study linked in the article: "Overall, our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence on the pervasive nature of plastic pollution and its potential implications for human health. As the usage of plastics in food packaging continues to rise, scientific research and policymaking must address the challenges posed by MNPL contamination to ensure food safety and consumer well-being."
> I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
So? Your inability to find meaningful context in something is not important. Who are you and why should this article or study cater to you? Are you in the business of doing research on this topic? Or are you just an HN commenter?
Your ignorance is not a sign of anything other than you being ignorant, and your inability to do something is just that: lack of skill.
> First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
Because you can't just assume. You test. That's science. Just assuming (your suggestion) is anti-science. And something we should NOT base our science off of.
> Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
That's not what this study is trying to determine. It set out to determine how much microplastics came from tea bags. Why increase the scope. Other people are studying that.
You really don't seem like someone who understands how this works. You don't put the puzzle together all at once, you put it together one piece at a time.
I find it quite ironic how many people on HN have a superiority complex to sites like Reddit, yet suffer the same pitfalls. Not reading the source material and going off of headlines or snippets.
Asking for “context” and “why did they study this” is quite interesting, considering the scientific study whose entire purpose is to introduce this context is directly linked within the article.
Exactly. This is a study about the exposure and absorption parts of the equation. The science is ongoing. People who can't deal with anything less than total certainty don't understand the process.
Just for your information, the attitude in this comment makes it hard to actually engage it in a serious conversation. It does have "conspiracy uncle" vibes and so people might avoid replying.
Maybe that's your goal all along but if not, try to reread your comments before posting them, as they might not reflect how you actually want to come across with others.
The fact that you believe conspiracies are real, of course. Duh. Every Smart Person knows that powerful people never conspire. Also the definition of 'conspiracy' given in Black's Law Dictionary is a fiction; there is no such thing as conspiracies. At all.
First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? How does that compare with microplastics entering our food and drink from the plastic-lined paper cups we drink hot tea and coffee out of, from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in, from the bottled water that sits inside plastic for months, from all of the plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens, from the disposable serrated plastic knife we might use at an event to cut our chicken, and so forth? Why tea bags?
Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else? Surely if you brew tea in a wooden container, "microwood" particles are entering the drink. Surely when you scrape your stainless steel spatula against your stainless steel skillet making scrambled eggs, "microsteel" particles are embedded in your eggs. How does the body deal with micro-everything? Is there any reason to think plastic is more harmful? Is there any specific supposed health consequence, like a specific type of cancer or increased aging or something?