Hacker News Reader

Comment by 40four | Hacker News Reader

I was curious if the micro-plastics could be coming from the bottles they are packaged in. The article says...

It's not clear how the plastic is getting into the bottled water — whether it's the water source itself or the air or the manufacturing and bottling process.

"Even the simple act of opening the cap could cause plastic to be chipping off the cap," Mason said.

I think it's easy to assume it's from the water source, & or a low quality filtration process, but it could very well be from the same bottle you are holding.

I suspect it's a combination of both. Is it possible some of the brands with higher counts use a lower quality plastic for the bottle & cap? This also makes sense to me since San Pellegrino has the lowest profile, and often comes in glass.

View on HN

> This also makes sense to me since San Pellegrino has the lowest profile, and often comes in glass.

No mention of which variant(s) (glass, plastic, both?) were tested, right? (or I haven't been able to find the statement)

I didn't notice any mention. Just a guess though, I've seen S. Pellegrino in plastic so it's possible theirs were.

If this https://orbmedia.org/stories/plus-plastic/ is the website that posted the results (weird site - what's with all those huge/fancy animations?): I keep seeing small plastic bottles (in the animations) => does San Pellegrino sell it (as well) in small glass bottles? (or are the small ones only plastic/PET)?

It comes in glass for both small and big bottles.

Someone could test this:

- Measure bottle water microplastic contents.

- Measure tap water microplastic contents.

- Put tap water in bottles and graph amount of microplastics vs days. If you want to measure e.g. 10 days, fill and leave 10 * N bottles resting, then open and measure N bottles everyday.

- If it can be demonstrated that the plastics come from the bottle, repeat with other batches where every day the bottles are shaken vs still, or under the sun vs shadow, etc. to see what affects them the most.

Probably all of the above.

We know microplastics are in the air, we know they are in aquifers, we know any plastic material municipal water is going through could result in micro plastic contamination just from wear, potentially from the filters they are running the water through before bottling and any plastic fittings or piping on that fill the bottles. It's wholly plausible it's a contamination of any/all of them in any given sample.

It's crazy that micro-plastics are even in the air. Gross!

While less common, San Pellegrino does come in a plastic bottle. I’m curious why they didn’t include the packaging in the graphic of the brand breakdown linked elsewhere, seems like this is a super relevant variable.

Just fyi in Switzerland I see the two main supermarkets (Migros & Coop) selling it only in plastic bottles.

My suspicion would be that at least some of the plastic particles are coming from the bottles themselves. Plastic degrades over time, so this would not be too surprising.

Right, I'm curious is some of the outliers at the high end were from older bottles that had been on the shelf longer.

Or perhaps if they were exposed to heat, oxidation, or physical stress even (dropped, squeezed, overly pressurized)

This was the story I had heard years ago, that they are left in the heat/sun and the plastic of the bottles can melt into the water.

> overly pressurised

It would be interesting to compare carbonated versus uncarbonated.

> I was curious if the micro-plastics could be coming from the bottles they are packaged in. The article says...

I assumed that they were talking about from the bottle itself.

Makes me wonder how much plastic kids eat when they eat with plastic spoons

everything for kids is plastic. it's sad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com