Most people believe that the water in plastic bottles has been filtered and is pure. However, a new scientific study has revealed the bottled water risks to human life. According to the study, a liter of water in a plastic bottle contains more than 240,000 plastic particles.
For the study, researchers, at Columbia University, chose the top three bottled water brands available in the US. The researchers discovered that there were between 100,000 and 350,000 plastic particles in every liter of water. This is a hundred times greater amount of plastic particles than was previously thought, and 90 percent of these are microplastics. This study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
“Previously this was just a dark area, uncharted. Toxicity studies were just guessing what’s in there. This opens a window where we can look into a world that was not exposed to us before,” study co-author Mr. Beizhan Yan, an environmental chemist at Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said.
According to the report, nanoplastics pose a greater threat than microplastics because they are often undetectable. In the past, there was uncertainty regarding the presence of nanoplastics, but there was no technology available to identify them. It’s being studied now that microscopy technology has advanced.
What are Nanoplastics and Microplastics?
Fragments smaller than a quarter of an inch, or 5 millimeters, to 1 micrometer, one-millionth of a meter, or 1/25,000th of an inch, are referred to as microplastics. Nanoplastics, which are particles below 1 micrometer, are measured in billionths of a meter.
After entering the body, nanoplastic particles swiftly combine with the blood and make their way to the organs, brain, and cells. It is evident from research that there is a chance that pregnant women’s fetuses could be exposed to nanoplastics through the placenta. In 2021, it was found that each time a bottle is opened and closed, tiny plastic particles fall into the water. According to a 2022 study, pipe water contains larger plastic particle sizes than bottled water.
Experts think that the nanoplastics in the human body could lead to increased mortality, birth defects, and gastrointestinal disorders, among other health risks.
We just need to look for alternatives to plastic whenever we can. Avoiding consuming food and beverages in plastic containers would be a great start to a healthy life.