Drinks in glass bottles contain more microplastics than those in other container
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So yeah, sure, there are microplastics in drinks in glass bottles. But to say they contain “more” microplastics than plastic containers sounds like the BS concocted by packaging lobby.
Here’s a fun fact: did you know that a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water! We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything.
I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds.
You mean like global warming and how the climate change catastrophe we are experiencing has changed human behavior to stop polluting? <sarcastic mode>
I can't imagine that anything will change the minds of the majority of people to the point where they drastically change their lifestyles.
Anything less than critical mass can be swept under the rug by governments until your term is over.
So what we might see is - an early adoption in some industries and use-cases and a slower adoption in others while better materials are invented/discovered.
On a brighter note, with all the kick-ass compute we’ll have in triple digit billion dollar AI facilities, that opens up scope for new discoveries in science. Hopefully, accelerating its pace.
Micro-plastics and forever chemicals will be this century's Lead.
My understanding is that the bigger consumer of plastic are first world countries, by far. And since decades.
Developed countries consume (buy and throw away) most of the plastic.
Then, on top of it, they ship their trash to third world countries.
For instance, one of my favorite pens is from a Japanese company that has consistently resisted making it reusable. Therefore, Japan, known for its cleanliness, indirectly contributes to a significant portion of avoidable waste. Of course, North America has its own equivalent, such as Bic pens. Not to mention the vast amount of wasteful toys. The third world, on the other hand, faces a slightly different challenge, primarily centered around plastic bags, bottles and containers.
On a slight tangent, maybe the real problem is consumption. But good luck taking that up with pro-capitalists!
I've seen blocks of land covered in weed mat after a demolition was performed and before the next build or sale of the land...it's then just disposed of...
In the countryside in Japan, plastic burning is still fairly common. Civil engineers just bury those 1 ton bags in roadside and riverside embankments full of soil...if that embankment is ever ripped up again, the soil is going to be full of fragments of those bags, either way they’re shedding into waterways starting from now.
Yes Japan incinerates a lot of plastic but there is only one incinerator which does C02 capture at the moment. I honestly think the average person in Japan sees it like it's just organic material. Interestingly, it’s a lot of work as a consumer to constantly sort it, clean it and dispose of it to code.
We should be moving to ban plastics in consumer goods but because they have become so ubiquitous there is basically zero chance of that ever happening
Old news https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...
> maybe even in milk
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03458-7
https://journals.lww.com/kleu/fulltext/2024/17020/qualitativ...
> eggs
And yet we survived -- or rather, significantly improved our living standards.
Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees.
Ironically, biological structures are made of the same or very similar polymers as synthetic plastics.
It's not BS. This is a government lab. The scientists clearly identified the source of the extra microplastics, the paint on the bottle caps.
Home distillation is cheaper than RO (esp. if you have solar) and doesn't release microplastics. Just remineralize with a high-quality salt
Our best hope is nanotechnology and bots or maybe even bioengineered cells or microorganisms that can get in there and eat them or at least reroute them out of the human body through natural pathways.
Some volatiles are going to come through (which can be mostly mitigated with an activated charcoal filter at some point in the process), but you’re vaporizing the water and condensing it back into a liquid, leaving behind stuff like metal and microplastics.
Does anyone here know if they are RO systems that don't have that problem?
Natural rubber from tires is a significant source of microplastics (along with the other polymers the tire is made of)
Oh well, at least they have some in that design with cork tipped plugs. It's a bit harder to find though.
We better evolve to tolerate some level of microplastics because they're not going away any time soon. It's mind boggling how many microplastics sources are in modern civilization, and how hard it would be to eliminate say half of them.
You can do the experiment at home but there’s many videos online: place the cork plug on a plate and put in inside your microwave for a couple of seconds. The glue melt.
It would surprise me to find out that the traditional, straight-from-the-tree kind need adhesive to stay in the bottles. I mean corks have been used to stop bottles for hundreds (thousands?) of years; surely they didn't use glue all that long ago?
I suppose - to supply a speculative counter-argument myself - it may be more profitable to cut the natural corks X% smaller, and counteract the mechanical deficit with glue. (That's, uh, kinda typical of the world we live in.)
Can anyone out there speak directly to that?
Regarding the pre modern chemical techniques: not an expert but it seems people used to drink younger wine back then, and used wooden barrels or clay amphora for the older times. For in between times (and the amphora) solid cork as you mentioned seem very plausible.
Considering the material deficit: consider that when you do the microwave cam cooking, the cap double in size and don’t fall down in many small parts. It’s so big it’s basically impossible to put it back inside the bootle. My 2 cents hypothesis is they use glue to use more cork and have a better sealing, enhancing the conservation.
We don’t just “evolve“ without massive deaths. Is that what you’re hoping for?
In case of water, both glass and plastic are quite clean in terms of microplastic particles. Beer (glass) seems to be heavily contaminated.
If I'm reading this correctly, it seems that glass bottles are often paired with resin or PET-coated caps, which shed quite a lot of microparticles.
[1] https://anses.hal.science/anses-05066642v1/file/Chaib_JFCA_2...
So a useful study to say "stop painting the insides of caps, duh" but it hardly seems like anything intrinsic to the container. And hard to extrapolate to other areas which may not paint their caps, or anything that uses corks.
Though also:
>The results show that glass containers were more contaminated than other packaging for all beverages except wine, because wine bottles were closed with cork stoppers rather than metal caps.
So yeah. Cap differences, probably for fashion more than function, which are probably easily remedied.
To be fair, I think almost every article that mentions microplastics mean nanoplastics. Microplastics seem to be defined in the milimetre range, so they should be well visible.
They didn't even identify if problem is the glass or stuff like pains around the glass.
It is a public administrative body reporting to the Ministries of Health, the Environment, Agriculture, and Labour.
Regardless, the headline seems to be literally accurate. Microplastics are indeed found in larger quantities in glass-bottled drinks than in plastic-bottled drinks. Those microplastics in glass-bottled drinks come from the paint on the designed-for-glass-bottles bottle cap.