Plastic particles in bottled water | Hacker News Reader

Plastic particles in bottled water

nih.gov

33 pointsthunderbong15 comments

> The researchers found that, on average, a liter of bottled water included about 240,000 tiny pieces of plastic. About 90% of these plastic fragments were nanoplastics. This total was 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than seen in earlier studies, which mostly focused on larger microplastics.

As someone with a less than average understanding of medicine and health in general, I don't know what to do with this information other than be sad and concerned.

> ...these are small enough to enter the body’s cells and tissues

Same. No training to identify concern vs FUD in health news, but I'm erring on side of caution. We are limiting exposure to plastic drink bottles in general (sport drinks in plastic during/after children sporting events are common where I live)

> As someone with a less than average understanding of medicine and health in general, I don't know what to do with this information other than be sad and concerned.

Wait until you hear about all the chemicals you inhale out in nature as well. Fine silicon dioxide particles can cause silicosis. Don't go to the beach!!

I'm going to have to log off of HN for a while. Got a beach trip coming up, so your comment is timed awfully haha

Sadly, we still lack risk assessments posed by human exposure to micro and nanoplastics which makes it hard to know how bad this is to us.

Yeah. It would also be nice if they gave some comparison values, like typical microplastic / nanoplastic levels in municipal drinking water.

Hold your horses!

> The researchers say that this new technique will help to advance our understanding of human exposure to nanoplastics.

Note my emphasis on "new technique"

> In the future, the researchers will apply this approach to analyze more environmental samples, such as tap water, indoor and outdoor air samples, and biological tissues.

This is clearly a novel research technique, and this article is about some of the earliest findings.

The findings here seem extremely concerning. HOWEVER, wouldn't we expect to see the negative effects of these microplastics play out in an obvious way in older generations by now? Plastics became common in the 1950s.

(To be clear I would very much rather _not_ have microplastics in my body.)

But most stuff they drank came out of uncoated pop-cans and glass until about the 80's.

I’ve always noticed that water in plastic bottles gets a plasticy taste if it’s been stored a long time or in the sun and I figured that couldn’t be good.

ironically the push for recycling, which won't solve any of the plastic issues but might make the cost of plastic bottles cheaper for the manufacturer (because now the state provide service or monetary incentives to what is ultimately plastic production) not only cause more plastic but lower quality plastic that leaches more micro plastic into the water.

A Plastic bottle under heat must be releasing more particles

Do new plastic bottles release more particles, or rather old reused ones?

Bottled water has always been a disaster. I have to wonder how much underinvestment there’s been in municipal water infrastructure because rich people just buy expensive bottled water that’s been shipped from all over the world.

> because rich people just buy expensive bottled water

People buy bottled water for a lot of different reasons. For example, the fact that you don't have to keep track of an empty bottle, and then clean that bottle.

Reusable water bottles also have a lot of bacteria.

(Although, I freely admit I find it silly to drink bottled water at home or in the workplace.)

Now that nanoplastic is being detected in semen ([https://www.sciencealert.com/experiment-reveals-microplastic...]) I wonder if we will see any Lysistrata events.

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