Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don't exist in nature. They're similar to cellulose but no organisms exist that eat them. They're believed to be nonreactive and therefore harmless but they might bioaccumulate which could be bad, or they might react with things in our bodies in unknown circumstances. We have limited experience with these molecules so it is hard to say.
> Various examples of damage caused by microplastics have been reported, such as microplastic accumulation in the bodies of marine and aquatic organisms (leading to malnutrition), inflammation, reduced fertility, and mortality. The threats that microplastics present to the human body have not yet been clearly identified. However, previous reports have shown that ultrafine microplastic absorption resulted in complex toxicity in zebrafish,2 and that microplastics under 100 nm in size can reach almost all organs after entering the human body.3 Therefore, concerns exist regarding the negative effects of continuous microplastic accumulation in the human body.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10151227/
> Microplastics have been found in a variety of organisms and multiple parts of the human body. We emphasize the potential impact of microplastics on the early exposure of infants and the early development of embryos. At present, the toxicity research on microplastics show that the exposure will cause intestinal injury, liver infection, flora imbalance, lipid accumulation, and then lead to metabolic disorder. In addition, the microplastic exposure increases the expression of inflammatory factors, inhibits the activity of acetylcholinesterase, reduces the quality of germ cells, and affects embryo development. At last, we speculate that the exposure of microplastics may be related to the formation of various chronic diseases.
You missed this part, which is the most important one.
I'd wait for more research before freaking out.
The answer being unclear means it makes sense to treat them, from a regulatory standpoint, closer to asbestos. It also makes sense to treat them as an unknowable and not regulate, because any alternative might be worse.
But it does point to there being a dearth in research and answers, and we should solve that as quickly as possible and maybe limit our exposure when viable, known to be non-toxic alternatives exist.
I'm not sure the follows logically, it ignores a bunch of known facts about biology to imagine that there is a pathway for these to cause major issues.
Survival odds in car crashes demonstrate this nicely: count the outcomes and divide. If "the survival odds were unclear, scientifically speaking" then car accidents would have to be orders of magnitude more rare and less lethal than they are.
Was the most important part of all the tobacco research the bits that said “Smoking tobacco is healthy”? Or the studies of lead in gasoline the caveats that said “These are small samples”?
I prefer fact over fear based science.
What is that supposed to mean? Most science is based on theories but you don’t wait for the Theory of Everything to take learnings of science. Fear is a very useful emotion and you shouldn’t fear it.
Now hypothesis is what you were probably mistaking a theory with. A hypothesis is something unproven and may or may not be a real thing.
The amount of exposure has also changed. Some bakelite knobs on your armoir aren't a big deal. Sleeping with a 'fleece' blanket and inhaling polypropylene all night every night may not be fine.
Personally, I don't have confidence in being able to be an informed consumer of plastics, and it's easier to just minimize platic use in general without trying to decide what's dangerous and what's ok.
Actually, it's not even that as most of the modern increase in life expectancy / fall in mortality occurred before the invention of plastics.
The former largely concluded by the 1920s. Plastics were largely invented during the 1930s, and were introduced as products over subsequent decades, at an ever-increasing rate.
Which is to say: whatever lead to the increase in life expectancy was largely not plastics. Rather it was increased general hygiene, sanitation, food quality, refrigeration, waste removal, and sewerage systems.
I'd mentioned this only a few months back, note especially my follow-up comment which similarly points out another frequently-touted factor which also fails the temporal sequencing test:
To wit, life expectancies in North America have been declining the last few years.
Also, plastics have been around for 100+ years. That would be one heck of a lag.
*EDIT* They're not back to pre-COVID levels yet, but getting closer.
I'm sure that has nothing to do with predatory health insurance companies.
To suggest otherwise is clueless and asinine.
[†]: Works as well for high fructose corn syrup or Fentanyl.
Remember the black spatulas a while back, and how it turned out to be a math error?
Seems like a pretty minor change to me. I’m already going out of my way to not put metal in there anyway…
Overcome the effect of antibiotics and vaccines that's just what it shows, and that's really not surprising
> Remember the black spatulas a while back, and how it turned out to be a math error?
The math spatula being an ill-founded crusade from a line researcher doesn't mean you can make nonsensical argument to say it's not harmful…
Humans existed. They had an average life expectency of 'x'. Then we introduced plastic. The life expectency became x+y.
We cannot say that plastic caused the increase, but it is clear that any decrease was small enough to be hidden by other factors.
Am I saying that it's harmless? No. Am I saying that your effort and attention are better spent checking your fire extinguishers arent expired or that your brake pads don't need changed? Yes. Those things have significant and obvious impacts on your survival odds. This does not.
Yes, but those "other factors" being antibiotics and vaccine, it turns out that even the deadliest pollutants we know were hidden by other factors, so it really gives us no idea about how harmful it is, as it could go from "harmless" to "cause millions of death every year" that's why I say the argument makes no sense.
> Am I saying that your effort and attention are better spent checking your fire extinguishers arent expired or that your brake pads don't need changed? Those things have significant and obvious impacts on your survival odds. This does not.
That's the problem, you cannot make this conclusion at all, it could be much worse than those two while still being hidden in longevity statistics, just because antibiotics and vaccine has so strong of an effect on life expectancy! Having no fire extinguisher at home has pretty much no impact on your life expectancy, but at the time plastics were introduced a significant fraction of the newborn didn't reach 10yo because they died of an infection of some sort.
I see what you mean, and I think we're basically coming at the same point from different angles. If you are a medical researcher or involved in crafting legislation this is probably important. You could help save millions of lives in aggregate. However, I'm suggesting that individual people should think of the opportunity cost before they panic. After all, a person can only worry about so many things and almost everyone is at or past their capacity.
To use another half baked example, if plastics take away a year, and antibiotics give you 5 extra you still win. However, if smoking cigarettes, obesity, or driving too fast risk taking away 10 years, start with one of those first.
Optimizing the bits of life that are too small to reliably measure is just not a great way to live, unless you've already handled all of the low hanging fruit in your life. Anxiety kills people too.
I seem to recall a recent study of microplastic levels in a general population, where people with higher microplastic levels seemed to be tea drinkers, which took some by surprise at the time. I think the population under study was from latin america, if I'm not mistaken. Since this study now has flooded the search results, I'm having trouble finding that specific study.
Be that as it may, it's likely that there is a focus on tea because tea-drinkers scored high on microplastics in previous studies.
Over the past few decades there has been a trend for plastic based materials replacing natural materials in everyday things.
Polyester textiles: Found in most clothing, bedding, and furniture upholstery.
Polyurethane coatings: Applied on wooden furniture to give it a glossy, durable finish.
Vinyl flooring and tiles: Replacing traditional wood or ceramic options in many homes.
Nylon carpets and rugs.
Synthetic leather (PU or PVC): Found in everything from sofas to shoes, replacing genuine leather.
It's got to a point where it's now hard to find natural materials in some categories. My wife was looking for a new sweater and most shops only had polyester or acrylic.
This is one thing that confused me about the first article I saw on this. The paper lists three things it detected, one being cellulose, and various articles will list them all together as if they're just three microplastics to be worried about.
The paper seems to encourage this reading with this line: "the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer"[0].
Was sample 3 completely fine? If so, why is say "Nanoplastics were obtained from three teabag brands during a standard preparation"? Are they classing cellulose as nanoplastics?
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...
Steel also contains carbon and if it is stainless steel it also has chromium and probably other metals.
I think something else that doesn't get mentioned is it's not just the risk of microplastics reacting, the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically. So nonreactive shouldn't be taken to imply harmless.
Source?
> In general, mechanical interactions of microparticles and nanoparticles on biological membranes are vaguely studied, despite their importance for biological systems (29, 41). Hereby, we will demonstrate that these microplastics induce a mechanical stress of model cell membrane without the need of indirect assumptions about biological pathways (26, 27).
That would mean fiber in food is harmful since it is not digested. Cellulose is just a common type of natural fiber. Meanwhile:
USDA recommends that people consume the following amounts of fiber per day:
-- Women ages 31–50: 25 grams
-- Men ages 31–50: 38 grams
They are short-chain hydrocarbons, which most definitely exist in nature.
We aren't fully aware of the implications of microplastics on health, but the main cause for concern is that we have no easy way of getting them out (either naturally or medically) in the event that they are harmful.
I think they are a pretty reasonable thing to study. Teabags are porous plastic subjected to high heat. So the question has to be "what happens when these plastic baggies get exposed to high levels of heat? Does that liberate some of the plastic into the drink?"
Particularly worthy because tea is one of the most common beverages consumed.
For myself, I don't do any of the above (with the possible exception of the last one once in a while). I thought everyone knew those were a bad idea.
I do drink tea using tea bags though — and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved.
> and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved
The picture from the study of the cellulose bags show a round “pillow” style bag which is likely sealed with a glue, unlike some cellulose bags which are folded and stapled:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S00456535240263...
From the article that summarized the study:
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.
So while polypropylene is the worst of the three by an order of magnitude, the cellulose pillow-style bag still leaches a large number of particles.
Here’s the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...
Notably, the authors tested OEM empty teabags for polypropylene and nylon, but chose a supermarket brand of cellulose pillow-style bags with tea still inside.
Lipton makes a premium brand that uses a tetrahedral shaped micro-perforated plastic bag that very much could be shedding microplastics.
It’s hard to have a discussion without a clear definition and terminology.
I bought like 1lbs ~2 years ago for about $20 and still haven't worked all the way through it :D.
I like to show friends a properly brewed Dragonwell green tea and a bug-bitten oolong to convert them to the loose leaf way.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ljudloes-tea-infuser-stainless-...
I'd say these extra strong bags have become common in the last 15 years in the UK. How they are strengthened I'm not sure, but my parents compost most of their food waste and they reckon worms now push teabags to the top of the compost bin, when previously they would just disappear with everything else and never be seen again.
They aren't pushing the teabags to the top, they're digging to defecate.
You said it yourself.
Never mind the clothes that you wear. Or the dishwasher that cleans the dishes.
Plastics have grown to be basically everywhere. Precautions are good. Same for studies. And we may find alternatives. But a lot of the fear around them does feel excessive.
It should be assumed that anything that we have invented in the last 200 years should be guilty until proven innocent at this point imo. So many of the "modern marvels" have shown to have horrible health effects.
Wood in its natural state is not a safe substance. African Mahogany for example is highly toxic, causing dermatitis, respiratory issues, giddiness, vomiting, boils, asthma, headaches, and nosebleeds. Has also been linked to nasal cancer.
If we "know" something, would we still be using the word "may"? Know seems pretty strong for such a wishywashy result of "may".
There's definitely research in fertility rates lowering. Phtalates are receiving a lot of attention as well as an example.
Best I can say is that there are theories, but we don't know if they are true or not yet. Some people think they are, some people disagree. That's why they are not facts.
The majority of people alive on Earth today grew up in a world where plastic packaging and containers were a common, completely accepted part of life. Research suggesting this is harmful is very new, and still not settled. You cannot blame anyone for not picking this random ubiquitous aspect of modern life and avoiding it because it might be bad for them. Home microwaves themselves are no older than home plastics - why do you trust them?
I stand by my claim that you and I should not have to research the health impacts of, for example, microwaves. We should have to think about it, but if you have a basic understanding of how they work and how to use them safely, and you listen to people who might tell you if there were an issue (friends, the news, the FDA, etc.), then that is enough. And when I say "how to use them safely", I don't mean doing your own experimentation to find the limits of the device. I mean being told not to put metal in it, maybe watching a video to see what happens if you do, and accepting that it's a bad idea and you won't do it. It is not possible for me to do a medical study on the impacts of eating microwaved food, but I have enough societal trust that I continue to use them anyway.
It is obvious to me that smoking is bad for you, it feels like an intuitive fact that nobody should have to be taught, but that's because I grew up in a culture absolutely saturated with that idea, and I didn't know anyone that smoked. Somebody who grew up 70 years ago in the complete opposite culture can't be blamed for not knowing at the time that smoking causes lung cancer. How could they know? Nobody can follow cutting-edge research from every field on the planet and adjust their life accordingly. Even if you could it wouldn't help - cutting edge science is often contradictory and it takes time for a consensus and convincing body of evidence to build up. I'm sure both of us hold intuitively obvious beliefs that we'll realize are wrong in 20 years.
What is the solution? It's not helpful to wait until after a coverup is exposed and then blame every individual who didn't somehow figure it out on their own. You also can't just believe the opposite of everything you've ever been told - you'll have the same problem. Some things that corporations produce are actually good for you, lobbyists are occasionally paid to promote something useful and true. Your parents were probably right about a lot of stuff they taught you. You can and should ask questions and learn as much as you can, but life is complicated, nobody can be deeply educated about every single thing they touch.
There has never been any reason to not trust microwaves themselves with food, because any undesirable effects caused by them cannot be worse than when heating food is done using traditional methods, at temperatures that are normally higher and much less controlled.
On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
There may be a few plastics that could really resist in a microwave oven without degradation, e.g. PEEK, but those are very expensive and they will never be used for a cheap article like a food container.
Already since a few decades ago, since I have first used a microwave oven, I have never used anything else but glass vessels covered with glass lids and I have always been astonished whenever I have seen or heard somewhere that there exist people who have the courage to put food in microwave oven in plastic containers, even if their vendor has the guts to say that this should be safe.
There is really no excuse for using plastic for heating food, as the only supposed advantage is being able to dump the plastic container without washing it, but the glass vessels used for heating food in a microwave oven are very easy to wash, much easier than washing vessels that have been used for traditional cooking or food heating.
> On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
How do you know this? Even as someone actively looking into this topic I'm not sure whether this is true. I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely asking where to learn about this.
It's called "having common fucking sense." Try it some time.
Instead of a paper towel, we throw food on a plate or bowl and drop a lid on it. This also works in the fridge; one less thing to wash and nothing disposed.
It is also noteworthy that the paper towel doesn’t soak in the consumable when reheating like a tea bag does.
That’s what a lack of context does. No harm in just avoiding anything any study has found to be potentially harmful (especially tea bags, which are a crime against good tea and easily replaced). But… it’s impossible to know if this is the equivalent of stopping smoking, or of brushing teeth three times a day instead of two.
I'm not sure that's even clear since they seem to be conflating cellulose with microplastics.
The problem is context. Lack of it. Good research contextualizes its findings.
A second infusion with bags always just ends up kinda watery and sad. Something about the leaves being smaller...
The trick was to use a lot of tea and steep it for only 30 seconds. One of the advantages was how quick it was to get my next cup.
Do you avoid restaurants and cafeterias completely?
They aren’t pure plastic.
You shouldn’t really be doing either of those things. Plastic tupperware will get damaged from heat if you use it in the microwave frequently, potentially contaminating your food.
It’s best to transfer food to a heat-safe container (glass or ceramic) before microwaving. And definitely don’t use cling film in the microwave!
So sure, I want context, but I think this kind of exasperation is a bit misplaced, as I don't think the article or the research itself was intended to be a comprehensive account of the broader contexts you are looking for. If it was masquerading as such a thing, I would be in full agreement. So I think it's a fair point in general, but the way you are saying it here sounds an awful lot like you're holding up a stop sign and saying "don't do any more research!"
Also once you put your mind to it it's actually pretty easy to avoid most of the things you mentioned. There are glass or metal alternatives to pretty much everything plastic. Maybe not for creating an airtight seal over something like leftovers, but I think it's reasonable to expect that the food can sit in glass and have a plastic roof and still be relatively free of microplastics.
More research is needed it seems pretty plausible that plastics, like asbestos, are only a hazard when friable.
Is it? The mesh bag goes through basically zero abrasion at less than 100°C. It just sits there in the mostly still water.
Meanwhile, the plastic container might be in contact with fatty food way over 100°C. It gets scraped by pointy utensils. It gets abraded by a cleaning pad. It gets scratched and cloudy. It gets used hundreds of times.
I'd be guessing the plastic container sheds orders of magnitude more microplastics.
The reason I'm sticking with the tea-bag as the greater contributor is that I expect that the likelihood of a given region of plastic detaching and being washed into food/drink is related to:
- how closely the overall piece resembles a sphere and how large that sphere is (e.g. whiskers are likely to be knocked off, whereas the center of a sphere is unlikely to be dug out
- whether it has ever gone through this kind of treatment before
Sort of like how when eating a donut covered in powered sugar 95% of the mess happens within the first second of handling it.
According to the paper[0]:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
The cited Banaei et al., 2023[1] says "At this point, special attention should be paid to the release of MNPLs from the herbal/teabags, since during the soaking and steering processes, some MNPLs inevitably detach and migrate to the water solution", citing [2]...which is retracted with this explanation: "2 of the reviews for this manuscript were fictitious. 2 reviews were submitted under the name of known scientists without their knowledge."
So, yeah. Sometimes it's interesting to follow citation chains a few steps.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
Well, lucky for you, there's an entire scientific study detailing why they chose to study it and the methodologies they used. You know, the one linked in the article. It states:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans.
And this is just a snippet! Much more detail and context available within! The wonders of original sources.
Recently read from “Made to Stick”: “Don’t just say popcorn has 40g of trans fats. Everyone knows trans fats are bad, but how bad is bad? Say popcorn has more trans fats in one serving than a whole day of greasy junk food”
The context is a comparison between good old paper tea bags.
Why?
In Germany paper tea bags are made out of natural fiber without glue.
But I would really like to know if this paper tea bags also release hefty amounts of microplastics, if somebody has a study please link. That those plastic tea bags are microplastic hell should have been obvious from the start. The first time I saw them until forever I will avoid them.
Lastly if this was anywhere else besides HN there is a microwood entering you joke to be made.
Long story shot - yes, this is a major problem. Yes, you're getting it from bottled water and plastic utensils and plastic lined cups. No, it's not like microwood.
This shit is being found in every organ of our bodies from our sex organs to our brains. It's found in most wild animal samples, it's found in rain, it's found on Everest's peak and in the Mariana Trench. And every indication is that it's getting rapidly worse, scaling up with our ever-increasing plastic production.
And there are perfectly good alternatives for the vast majority of this use, but the costs are a bit higher (since they're not being externalized onto the planet and our organs as much).
Yes, plastic is everywhere. No, the idea that it's at all harmful is not yet settled science. I suspect the right answer is "some plastics are bad", for example BPA.
Given that life expectencies have climbed since plastics invention, I'm willing to speculate that even if it is bad for you it's not by enough to worry about.
> I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
So? Your inability to find meaningful context in something is not important. Who are you and why should this article or study cater to you? Are you in the business of doing research on this topic? Or are you just an HN commenter?
Your ignorance is not a sign of anything other than you being ignorant, and your inability to do something is just that: lack of skill.
> First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
Because you can't just assume. You test. That's science. Just assuming (your suggestion) is anti-science. And something we should NOT base our science off of.
> Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
That's not what this study is trying to determine. It set out to determine how much microplastics came from tea bags. Why increase the scope. Other people are studying that.
You really don't seem like someone who understands how this works. You don't put the puzzle together all at once, you put it together one piece at a time.
Asking for “context” and “why did they study this” is quite interesting, considering the scientific study whose entire purpose is to introduce this context is directly linked within the article.
Maybe that's your goal all along but if not, try to reread your comments before posting them, as they might not reflect how you actually want to come across with others.
/s
Microplastics are also well established endocrine disrupters.
Microplastics cross the blood brain barrier and may also permanently stay in your body.
To what extent are these harmful? In what dose, over how much time? I don’t think that’s established. You could be cautionary, or wait for more science about how long it takes to reduce your fertility. It may also be inescapable, plastic is likely a permanent earth pollutant now, in your clothes, dust in the air, food, water, and most things in your home, including ones you abrasives use inside your body, like toothbrushes. Maybe only very high doses (like drinking tea from teabags once a day) have a detrimental health effect. Many compounds are lethal in high doses, and healthy, benign, or required for survival in low doses.
Not sure I understand your criticism. I think choosing tea bags and microplastics in particular is a way to 'ground' a study and experiments into something practical, rather than something too broad, abstract, and/or un-relatable to consumers.
First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? How does that compare with microplastics entering our food and drink from the plastic-lined paper cups we drink hot tea and coffee out of, from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in, from the bottled water that sits inside plastic for months, from all of the plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens, from the disposable serrated plastic knife we might use at an event to cut our chicken, and so forth? Why tea bags?
Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else? Surely if you brew tea in a wooden container, "microwood" particles are entering the drink. Surely when you scrape your stainless steel spatula against your stainless steel skillet making scrambled eggs, "microsteel" particles are embedded in your eggs. How does the body deal with micro-everything? Is there any reason to think plastic is more harmful? Is there any specific supposed health consequence, like a specific type of cancer or increased aging or something?