I’m surprised to see them characterize the cellulose from a paper teabag as releasing “microplastics.” I get that cellulose is a polymer, but do practitioners not distinguish between naturally-occurring polymers and synthetic plastics in this kind of microplastic/nanoplastic research?

When I boil some vegetables, do they leach microplastics into the cooking liquid, or is that something different from what this study is describing?

(Edit: on looking to the study itself, it seems like this was more about developing a methodology than asserting anything in particular about the paper teabag, which they described as a random pick stripped from some green teabags from the store.

Specifically I didn’t understand it to suggest that synthetic microplastics had gotten bound up in the paper matrix somehow and THAT was what was being released… so maybe it was, after all, just “model intestines absorb cellulose but not super well.”

Maybe practitioners would understand the cellulose results to be used like a control here?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352... )