1 Liter Water Bottle Can Hold 240,000 Plastic Particles

One liter water bottle can contain 240,000 microscopic plastic particles. The health effects of ingesting plastic are not clear, but early research suggests that such particles can travel to various organs in the body.

Millions of tonnes of plastic are produced every year as a result of human activities such as fishing and household waste. Most of this is made up of microplastics with diameters between 1 micrometer and 5 millimeters.

Previous studies have suggested that microplastics may act as carriers. Transport of pollutants and Pathogensay Yan Beizan At Columbia University in New York.

Plastic fragments less than 1 micrometer in diameter are known as nanoplastics and can pose an even bigger concern than microplastics. Their smaller size means they may have a better chance of penetrating the body's intestinal lining. placenta And even the blood-brain barrier, Yang says.

Nanoplastics are difficult to detect due to their large size, but Yang and his colleagues have developed an innovative technique to detect them.

The researchers took six 1-liter bottles of private-label water from three unnamed U.S. supermarkets and shot them with a laser that vibrated when they encountered plastic debris. On average, each bottle contained approximately 240,000 plastic particles. Up to 100x more than previous studies.

The type of plastic in the water was determined from the intensity of the laser's vibrations, and approximately 90% of it was nanoplastic. He was only able to identify 10% of this, but it contained polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the raw material for bottles.

There's no reason why other U.S. water bottles or water bottles from other countries wouldn't have similar amounts of nanoplastics, but this needs to be verified in independent research, Yang said.

In the future, researchers hope to improve the technique to identify more nanoplastics in water, he said.

shelley mason Researchers at Penn State University called the study “a very impressive and groundbreaking study.”

“We know that plastics emit particles, just as human skin cells continually shed particles, but being able to quantify and identify these plastic particles to the nanoplastic range is important for human health. “This is important for advancing our understanding of the impact on the human body,” she says.