Boiling and filtering can remove microplastics from drinking water: study | Hacker News Reader

Boiling and filtering can remove microplastics from drinking water: study

sciencealert.com

25 pointsBrajeshwar32 comments

> Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University in China

OK, there’s definitely more to the story. I wouldn’t know this, unless I had lived in China for a short bit working for Alibaba.

Pretty much nowhere in China is the tapwater safe to drink. The government knows it’s an issue, but there’s too much corruption in China to actually fix the problem. Pretty much everybody boils their tap water, and if you sit down at a restaurant, it’s very common to be served piping hot water with a meal.

Now I’m not saying the results of the study or invalid, but it’s essential to know who’s paying for it and and what their motivation is. to me this just seems like some very strange coincidences.

thank you, i got half way through the article and started to wonder about the greater context of where this came from and how it helps certain political efforts by giving people a means to take charge of their water quality. It's just... very convenient. But if/when other scientists can replicate then we'll see.

Can you expand more on this? I had same experience in China but not sure how it ties into this story?

It sounds like they're saying this is only a revelation to people in areas that don't already boil their water normally. Perhaps they may also be implying that because the study was done in China that they are trying to sweep microplastics under the rug as an issue in the first place because their people already boil the water.

If this study is accurate, then people in China don't need to worry about microplastics in water because they're already boiling all of their drinking water. It would be very convenient for them if this was true, which doesn't make it wrong but does make it somewhat suspicious.

It has to also be filtered, and they probably don't filter it in most cases. There are water delivery services that might get their water by boiling and filtering from the tap though.

It would be nice if they said what kind of filter to use. Would a paper filter from a coffee brewer do the job? Or do you need a fancier filter like campers use, to remove bacteria from pond water? Does the water still have to be boiling hot when you filter it? That's fine for coffee filters, not great for the other kind. I saw a mention of metal strainers but it wasn't clear whether that was only for larger chunks of scale.

Interesting, but boiling all of our water would use a lot of energy. And most filters don't get small enough to remove microplastics and PFAs.

Reverse osmosis systems do though, and you can get several that will install under your sink. I bought a APEC system and am super happy with it. Even though plumbing is about my least favorite home DIY, the kit came with most stuff I needed and I got it done. I even plumbed in my coffee maker (no more filling up every morning! best thing ever), refrigerator and hot water dispenser.

These do exist for large scale too, removes more from the water, and very likely less energy intensive.

I don't have experience with other companies but I really have been a happy customer of APEC. I have their countertop RO unit and it's been really nice.

> Interesting, but boiling all of our water would use a lot of energy.

All of our water - yes.

All the water needed for direct consumption and cooking - a rounding error.

We have been doing it for years without knowing this finding. We filter the water with Pur and then boil the water in the Kettle. Furthermore, we use Yeti or similar bottles to keep this water for hours, so it reduces the temperature enough to drink the water later. We make coffees and teas with this boiled water. But, I still think we need more process or processes to remove the micro plastics.

Exciting to see more work in this area.

See https://www.plasticlist.org/ for a recent SV based project to measure microplastic contamination across popular food and drink items.

Thanks for sharing this, very interested to follow them

Ergo you are really screwed drinking that „lime-encrusted plastic“.

How effective was the boiling alone? Would a typical Brita-type filler be sufficient for the final step?

Naturally, all of the consumer water fillers are likely made of plastic.

most brita systems are plastic all over except for the charcoal. im not sure adding hot water to that would be better, and even cooled water might have plastics re-added.

wouldn't you suppose that local water systems might set up a boiling water system - water comes in, gets boiled, can now go out - or is that too naive.

supposed benefit of centralized boiling of water - heat captured can be used as power source, probably cheaper to boil in one central location than everybody all over town boils water when they need to drink etc.

Very energy intensive, but probably possible

what about solar?

I am not a fluids, thermo engineer, but maybe:

Use a heat pump to boil the water with efficient transferred heat (instead of higher energy generated heat), and some kind of heat recapture from the steam.

The heat used to boil the water could largely be extracted from the steam, to increase efficiency, and speed up condensation.

If this could be done with a small unit, it would be a nice upgrade over the common end-point on-demand hot water heater.

Any temperature water from just under boiling hot, through regular "cold"/room, down to chilled, based on heat recapture level. Always clean.

sure, but I suppose that 10000 people boiling their own drinking water would maybe be more energy intensive / less efficient.

But I can see I got multiple down votes for this supposition already.

The majority of water is used in ways that none of it would be drank. Even just looking at homes, only about 20% of water in a typical home is used in the faucet (and I expect that's primarily not for drinking).

You'd almost need to set up an entirely separate distribution system for it to be more efficient than doing it in the home.

OK, pretty good example of my not considering all the inputs to the problem even though I knew all the inputs.

you'd still need to filter it.

Now you have very hot water going through pipes not designed for it. I don't know what the consequences would be but I can easily imagine that some might be serious either from an economics or health point of view, possibly both.

I was supposing microplastics come into system before they reach centralized location and not in the pipes from centralized location to output in home.

But evidently I'm wrong in that supposition?

I had in mind the effects of hot water on materials not originally designed with it in mind and that the water might dissolve some materials at least slightly but also cause expansion where it was not expected possibly resulting in leaks.

I don't think so (I'd wager too much transmission loss), but pumping heat directly through some other , more efficient transfer medium from a plentiful source (like geothermal energy) might be viable. That heat energy can be directly applied to hot water geysers, central heating, etc etc - basically anywhere you could use a furnace, and some places you can't.

yes i've always promoted steeping to extract the delicious plasticizers so you can discard the now flavorless and relatively bioinert plastic chunks

But doesn’t that just leave melted plastic in the water?

Reading the article states they get trapped in the limescale crust that forms from boiling water, and the crust is strained using a mesh filter like already available on many electric kettles.

The study is from Feb 2024.

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