> 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.
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.