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... )
>do practitioners not distinguish between naturally-occurring polymers and synthetic plastics in this kind of microplastic/nanoplastic research?
They don't care. This is a junk paper that cites a bunch of other junk papers. It's published in the same junk journal that gave us the junk paper on black plastic kitchen utensils. I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit, but what you're looking at has nothing to do with science.
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/journal-that-publishe...
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/13/publisher-slaps-60-pa...
Related thread,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42494733 ("Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index (arstechnica.com)", 63 comments)
>I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit
Not even the part about how you know it's junk? Is that based on your own critical analysis of the content, or just on what Retraction Watch has to say about Chemosphere?
Microplastics really are the new shit magnet of science papers.
You get nice news headlines with no tangible issues to health are found and it's easy to just prove a bunch of microplastics in all the things.
If I wanted an easy PhD I'd likely do the same due to how shitty academic hustle is in today's world...
“No tangible issues to health” … not too long ago members of the tobacco industry were claiming about the same thing.
The White House, taking microplastics seriously: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Mobili...
Do they do that because it's popular or because there is scientific consensus?
Not only of science papers, I recently bought new shampoo and it has a "0% microplastics" label, on its plastic bottle.. it's milking people's emotions for money, like usual
> I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit
Nobody gives a shit what you say so you might as well give us something fun to read.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
There is some confusion about the materials used in teabags. Depending on the brand, they may be pure cellulose, or they may be made with plastics and PFAs.
https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
Thankfully they break down the results per material, so you can care about the other materials and ignore the cellulose results if you like. So, yes, the different types of material are distinguished from one another.
> 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.
That’s also the materials from each type of tea bag, not a list of materials found in a single bag:
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
Yes, to the rebuttal of: "do practitioners not distinguish between naturally-occurring polymers and synthetic plastics in this kind of microplastic/nanoplastic research"
The quote you provided explains clearly, they measured three different types of teabags, distinguished by the different material that each was made of. "three teabags of different chemical compositions"
Edit: to indicate agreement
>the cellulose from a paper teabag
You have a mistaken understanding of paper teabags. They are made of paper, but during manufacturing the paper bag is sprayed with plastic to finish it
(And no, I’m not talking about the silky plastic pyramid style ones. Just the cheap paper ones)
> Most paper tea bags also have plastic fibers used in the sealant in addition to these nylon and PET plastic tea bags. Even paper tea bags have an unsettling substance called epichlorohydrin added to them in order to keep them from bursting.
this is such garbage paper you are referencing, and in particular the claim "most paper tea bags contain unsettling amounts of bad plastics" screams for citations and testing method.
I guess the authors only took into consideration some bad quality local trash brand.
Here is an in-depth study of different brands and the materials they contain.
https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
The paper states:
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
To me, that suggests there were bags included containing no PP or Nylon-6.
it could be a siloxane coating as detailed here: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0632163A1/en
so 3-20% of the cellulose fiber could be hydrophobic additives
The paper talks about looking for cellulose particles, though, not siloxane or PLA or whatever.
Yorkshire Tea claims "most of the bag is made from natural fibres like wood pulp and the seal is made with PLA - an industrially compostable, plant-based plastic"
> In environments above 60°C, such as in hot liquids or high-heat exposure, PLA can begin to leach additives or degrade into its lactic acid monomers
Why the fuck are these sodding tic tacs putting 3D printer plastic into tea bags that will be thrown into boiling water?!
Because it's literally a polymer of lactic acid? It's safe enough that they use it for medical implants because its degradation products already exist in the body?
(Or is this a sarcastic response along the lines of "didn't you know it contains dihydrogen monoxide, a chemical widely used in nuclear reactors and military applications!"?)
- "degrade into its lactic acid monomers"
Pretty sure this is benign. Apparently they use this polymer for medical implants, for a type designed to slowly dissolve:
Well that's interesting, I presumed the so called biodegradability of PLA was more of a joke since you need to compost it, but the body is fairly warm I suppose.
Regardless the problem is not the plastic itself, but the plasticizers and other additives that leech out once you decompose it from what I understand. For medical use I would expect it's fairly stringent on what goes into it, but for something like tea bags I'm less sure.
Challenge accepted; I will endeavour to include the phrase “sodding tic tacs” into a Christmas dinner conversation.
Top marks.
>Why the fuck are these sodding tic tacs putting 3D printer plastic into tea bags
PLA was around long before 3D printers became known to everyone under 30 years of age. It was first discovered in the 1920s by Wallace Carothers.
Ok Zoomer
I suspect this is something like Tazo that has the little pyramids make of a nylon type material vs the basic Lipton type tea bag that's just a paper product.
According to the comment just above you, that’s not the case, it’s talking about plain paper bags that are then treated. They link to an NIH page as their source.
That said, the paper states:
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
I also wonder about those re-usable Keurig pods that are typically a plastic frame with plastic mesh.
It doesn't seem like the study adds very much over the "See also" link from 2019 (https://phys.org/news/2019-09-plastic-teabags-microscopic-pa...).
Anyway, it comes across like they're trying to warn about nylon or polypropylene being unexpectedly found in disposable tea bags that appear to be made of paper; but in the details you read that the microplastics are "derived from several types of commercially available tea bags" - a category which certainly includes bags very openly and obviously made of nylon (reusable, pyramid-shaped ones). There are tons of places reporting on this new study, but the idea doesn't seem to be new at all. (It also seems like common sense to me that immersing a fine plastic mesh in your food, and allowing it to reach close to 100 degrees Celsius, might be a risk for this sort of thing.) It wasn't new in 2019, either: see e.g. https://ratetea.com/topic/nylon-tea-bags/30/ .
But then, a bit of searching suggests that the disposable paper bags may indeed contain a significant amount of plastic (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ , although the tone of the writing here seems rather fear-mongering). The reporting would be much better if it made this sort of thing clear.
there are cellulose bioplastics maybe thats what they were testing?
It sounded from the methods section like a random paper teabag from the store. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the manufacturing world had moved from paper to some kind of engineered cellulose bioplastic… but I always thought of those more in the context of rayon, and those horrible “bamboo” textiles and foams. (Versus linen made from bamboo fibers, which is lovely :)
Are there other processes that work out cheaper than paper for teabag kind of applications these days?
> I’m surprised to see them characterize the cellulose from a paper teabag as releasing “microplastics.”
I don't think they called cellulose microplastic anywhere. The issue is that commercial teabags these days often aren't using pure paper teabags:
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose
I believe the polymers are usually coming from the glue keeping the bag together. This is a known issue going back years [0].
0 - https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
I'm not a chemist, but skimming the paper it certainly sounds like the cellulose itself is what they are measuring:
> Following, ATR-FTIR analysis was performed in the teabags as well as in the leached mixture of nanoparticles plus fibers (Fig. 3). Both teabags and the leachate suspension matched their polymer composition being two of them petroleum-based polymers like nylon-6 (NY6, sample 1) and polypropylene (PP, sample 2), the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer.
I didn't see any mention of plastic binders or other material in the cellulose sample, just references to cellulose.
On the other hand, it was curious that they purchased the synthetic bags empty, but cellulose bags filled with tea, when it is pretty easy to find empty paper tea bags, so maybe there is something particular about the specific type of cellulose tea bag they chose?
keyword being cellulose polymer *composition*, there are hydrophobic additives infused into the cellulose fibers that are proprietary. For example: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0632163A1/en
For the bags made of cellulose, yes, for the PP and Nylon-6 bags, no:
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
Oh my. I hadn’t thought about the adhesives. And just at a gander at the study’s figures, their various microplastic signals from the cellulose bag are hard to distinguish from the pure nylon and polypropylene ones. That’s a sobering thought…
I’ve never seen glued teabags in Europe it’s usually just a metal staple holding them together.
I don’t know where you are in Europe, but I’ve been to enough of Europe to say that that pretty much everywhere uses teabags that look like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/ZKonRKNqTvfi1qd38.
Sometimes, the top fold is closed over with a small metal staple, but that’s not the only place the bag is sealed.
How do these “new” pyramid teabags stay in form? I don’t think they use staples…
The United Kingdom has a mixture of both types for sale in supermarkets.
"To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition."
The different teabag composition materials were from separate types of teabags, not composition materials of the same teabag.
So that's what I remember hearing this years ago: those silky looking teabags diffuse microplastics. Easy to avoid those.
Er, no. Those silky ones were likely worse, but a lot of the regular looking paper ones have polymer glues releasing microplastic as well.
Do you have any brands in mind? In the bagged tea with cellulose tea bags that I've bought, they are typically held together by just a staple. I've found this to be the case since I occasionally empty the tea from the teabags into my percolator.
Pillow style tea bags are fully enclosed paper tea bags with no string or tags, and have a crimp around the rim. I never thought about them using glue, but it makes sense. Some brands I know of that use them are Taylors of Harrogate, Celestial Seasonings, Republic of Tea.
Edit: Also some tea bags for loose leaf tea like t-sac or finum brands have that crimp on the edge. However, t-sac confirms they use glue, but finum specifically claims to not use glues, so maybe it is jumping to conclusions that all bags of these sort do.
PG Tips is a brand that sells those pyramid-shaped teabags that I believe are held together with the glue.
In 2018, Unilever announced that they would soon stop using plastics in their teabags. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/28/pg-tips-...
They've since reformulated the bags - can't find any statement about the new flat bags.
I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
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?
"Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food. "Microsteel" is just elemental iron which is a necessary nutrient.
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.
Missing from this answer is the early evidence that they may be _very_ harmful. Early evidence suggests they are not non-reactive. They disrupt many of the body's systems in ways we're only beginning to understand.
> 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.
> Almost all the studies on the toxicity of microplastics use experimental models, and the harm to the human body is still unclear.
You missed this part, which is the most important one.
So...perhaps worthy of further study, maybe including to understand where exposure comes from, and whether the particles are absorbed? Like this study.
Unclear doesn't mean safe, it just means hard to quantify. Your child could be in a car accident and their survival odds could be unclear, scientifically speaking. Doesn't mean "totally safe."
This is the wrong analogy because the article states that there's only theoretical harm. It could mean that one has to drink from 100 tea bags a day to get any adverse effects.
I'd wait for more research before freaking out.
It’s reasonable for people to take either approach: are microplastics more like asbestos or are they more like cellulose in terms of harm?
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.
>The answer being unclear means it makes sense to treat them, from a regulatory standpoint, closer to asbestos.
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.
Damage that is bad enough becomes easy to quantify, so no, "unclear" actually does put a bound on it.
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.
Sudden damage that is bad enough is easy to quantify. You should take a look at the decades long struggle to prove that cigarettes are harmful to see what it is like when the harm is chronic.
It doesn't mean unsafe either.
In what way is it the most important one?
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”?
It removes the possibility of fear mongering. I'm not aware of any modern research where smoking anything is claimed to be healthy, nor anything about lead in gasoline being too insignificant to pose a health risk.
I prefer fact over fear based science.
> 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.
You are mistaking "theories" and "hypotheses". Theory in science is not some wild shot in the dark, imagined by some random guy in the eureka moment. And neither it is a something yet unproven. Theories in sciences are usually sufficiently proven and stand on the other previously proven theories. Like for example evolution of species is a theory, despite it having more than a century of research and hard proofs. So yeah, science is based on theories, but not on a collection of lucky guesses.
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.
I did mistaken those, thank you for pointing that out. My point remains that science operates in the real world, where decisions often have to be made based on incomplete evidence, rather than waiting for certainty.
The reason for "why microplastics?" is because human use of everyday objects are more plastic than wood or steel. The reason for "why teabags?" is because of previous studies and because I think tea makes it to the top five of the most ingested liquid list.
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.
> The reason for "why microplastics?" is because human use of everyday objects are more plastic than wood or steel.
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.
> "Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food.
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...
Can the body break down cellulose though? It can't digest it at least. And do reactions that could use naturally occurring iron compounds work with steel alloys designed to be non-reactive?
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.
> physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically
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
>the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically
Source?
TBH I can't remember what I was looking up when I first read about that (I feel like it was metals, glass, or cellulose again), but https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2104610118 seems pertinent:
> 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).
No, it can't. Cellulose is the main type of insoluble dietary fiber, and is in leafy vegetables, beans, peas, and many other foods. It's widely accepted as being good for digestion. Too much fiber can cause constipation and gas, but most people probably don't get enough fiber, so that's rarely a problem.
And plastics are full of endocrine disruptors, which are pretty bad for human health too.
My current theory is that long term plastic exposure is what is driving the obesity epidemic.
Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don't exist in nature.
They are short-chain hydrocarbons, which most definitely exist in nature.
> "Microsteel" is just elemental iron which is a necessary nutrient.
Steel also contains carbon and if it is stainless steel it also has chromium and probably other metals.
The body does need trace amounts of chromium.
Elegant and pithy answer to a well asked question.
We know that some plastics mimic hormones (eg estrogens), which can cause problems (eg estrogenic cancers).
Wasn't asbestos non reactive?
> How does that compare with ... plastic-lined paper cups .. cling wrap that covers our food as we heat ... the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in ... bottled water that sits inside plastic for months ... plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens ... disposable serrated plastic knife...
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 research specifically deals with cellulose bags which are often sealed with glues containing synthetic polymers.
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.
This discussion is complicated by the loose (ha!) definition of tea bags. There’s about a million different tea bags. Some use denser paper, some are thin. Some are stapled, some are pressed. Some are stringed and some are not. Some are single-use cotton (which I learned about when a local tea brand stopped using them due to cost).
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.
The paper describes the three kinds of tea bags tested, and how the results differ between them.
Most teabags I use now don't split (some imported brands you have to be careful with), these are just regular looking ones not the fine mesh ones used by premium brands. I can jam them against the side of the cup to squeeze out liquid before removing the bag and they almost never split.
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.
LOL. Worms come up to eat food, go down and poop. Poop forces remaining food and wormpoop (compost) up to the top.
They aren't pushing the teabags to the top, they're digging to defecate.
Worm activity pushes the teabags to the top of the compost bin.
You said it yourself.
Do you never consume canned goods? Cans for soda are lined with a plastic. Same for vegetables.
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.
There was a different study earlier this year on hacker news about the storage items - cling wrap and plastic containers, those materials all leach into food at different rates depending upon the temperature, acidity of food, and length of exposure contact - hotter and more acidic and longer means more leaching. It's non-zero but the danger level is anyone's guess at this point.
Just FYI, you can buy stainless steel loose leaf tea infusers. They don't cost a lot ($6->$15) and loose leaf tea is shockingly cheap. Just get a nice airtight container and some moister absorbing packets and you'll have great tea for a while.
I bought like 1lbs ~2 years ago for about $20 and still haven't worked all the way through it :D.
I will also say that loose leaf is an order of magnitude better tasting than bagged tea. The crush-tear-curl process of bagged tea will elicit a bitter brew from anything that isn't black tea, and lose a lot of its flavor. Not to mention they're likely using the leftover chaff from loose leaf production.
I like to show friends a properly brewed Dragonwell green tea and a bug-bitten oolong to convert them to the loose leaf way.
If you've not already gotten it, this is the next purchase I'd recommend [1]. Nothing better than instant hot water at the right temp :D. Doesn't take hardly any power to run either.
now you'll probably get some sort of micro-something coming from the non-stick coating inside that thing.
The inside is silicon. Plumbing might be plastic, hard to tell.
I picked up a couple of these at IKEA years ago. Sets on the lip of most mugs for brewing and then can be removed and placed in its holder to contain drips.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ljudloes-tea-infuser-stainless-...
I've no idea why they chose teabags to study - one has to start somewhere, presumably - but I can answer the second question. The distinctive feature of plastics is the synthetic polymers that they contain, which classically feature bonds between oxygen atoms. These are extremely difficult for any organic process to break apart. Wood, however, can even be digested in small quantities, so 'microwood' will just break down into its constituent parts in the human body. The body can cope with metals and indeed has evolved to require a small amount, for instance in hemoglobin.
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've no idea why they chose teabags to study
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.
We do know that microplastics may be reducing male fertility. I know there are others but I haven't done a ton of research [1]. Wood and stainless steel are different because we have evolved with these materials in our surroundings or at least something close to them. Also, wood, and even metals, do not have the staying power of plastic. We already do know that heavy metals are bad if they stick around in your body, but we do need metals in our diets as nutrients as well.
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.
The dangers of sawdust (micro wood?) vary from species of tree to tree, but are generally well known and studied. in particular Manchineel and Yew are known to be dangerous.
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.
Wenge and Oak too.
> We do know that microplastics may be reducing male fertility.
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.
I didn't say that we know that they are reducing male fertility, we know that it's very possible. I could have said it probably does. But I'm not a scientist so I'm not going to.
We know it's very possible is a very wishywashy comment though.
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.
It means "we haven't ruled it out yet". And given the difficulty of conclusively demonstrating a negative, that's a very weak claim.
If you microwave your consumables in plastic that is on you. Microwavable plastic is a marketing myth. Put your food on a plate or bowl and cover it with a wet paper towel.
It is absolutely not on you. In order to function as an adult you need to be able to have some level of trust in your family, your society, and your government (depending on where you live, I guess). That doesn't mean blindly believing everything you hear, but it does mean not having to do novel scientific research to confirm everything you were ever taught.
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?
It is likely that most people do not pay much attention to whatever chemistry they learn in school, but at least I would have never trusted any plastic object to be in contact with food inside a microwave oven, even decades ago, when I was much less careful about contact between plastic and food at room temperature.
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.
What did you learn in high school chemistry that made you suspicious of plastic? I did pay attention and I don't think I remember us covering plastic at all.
> 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.
They also grew up in a world that was skeptical of plastics and chose to ignore the skepticism because not being skeptical and blindly trusting your family, society, government is a fools errand. The exact issue is people promoting this “well I shouldn’t have to think/research” way of life. That’s just nonsense and the reason we’re here. It’s a cute dream but ignorance will just kill you.
I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I don't agree that there was any widespread skepticism of the health impacts of plastic until very recently, maybe the last 5 years. There has certainly been broad concern about plastic trash and environmental pollution for a long time, but that's a different topic.
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.
I guess it depends on what segment of society you exist in. I (born in the early 90s) was raised in a plastic-free lifestyle, and many of the people my family associates with are the same. We are staunch environmentalists though, so I guess my experience is not typical. So, I don’t know about “widespread”, but the current of thought has been present in the zeitgeist for decades.
Was that about health concerns, or pollution and environmental concerns? Obviously health and the environment are very related, but what I mean is that even the term "microplastic" didn't exist when you were born, and I thought the idea that consumption of or close contact with plastic could cause individual health problems was relatively new. Not that literally nobody had thought of it, but my impression is that pushback against plastic for most of its history was driven by giant piles of trash that don't biodegrade, turtles getting stuck in soda packaging, stuff like that.
Plastic is made from oil, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe people never were skeptical of plastics and that skepticism wasn’t covered up by lobbying.
Yes of course, and lobbyists can be very effective. They covered up climate change and the harms of smoking too. I'm sure there are things that (almost) nobody knows today because of corporate cover-ups that we'll discover in 10 years. Climate change didn't enter the public consciousness until the late 80s, decades after the basic science was well-established, and it took more decades for it to become something that "everyone" knew about. That's the fault of corporations and lobbyists, not individuals that were too lazy to do their own climate modeling.
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.
No I didnt and I dont know anybody who did. Unless you count proper nutjobs seeing conspiracies everywhere and world controlled by nanochips etc.
Yes you bought right into it. New thing? It must be fine! Framing skeptics as nutjobs is exactly what caused the ignorance.
A broken clock can be right twice per day, but that doesn't mean that it is ever useful.
Then expect to remain ignorant and continuously duped.
We have a set of reusable silicone lids. They can withstand high temperature on stove or microwave and just rinse off. Hopefully they aren't found to release anything.
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.
You may be interested in Weck jars too that are made of glass for storage and are very affordable. They have glass lids.
I'm sure they are good, but you and I have quite different levels of "very affordable." On Amazon, they seem to average around $10 each depending on size. Contrast with mason jars at a little more than $1 each at my local Menards plus a bit more for reusable lids or silicone gaskets.
Depends on where you live, in Europe if you get the generic branded (not "the" Weck brand) ones they are $2 for small and $3-4 for bigger ones.
What makes you think there isn't BPA in your paper towels?
Because I was skeptical of paper towels too and only buy ones without.
It is also noteworthy that the paper towel doesn’t soak in the consumable when reheating like a tea bag does.
Isn't the wet paper towel and EM reflector? I use wax paper fwiw.
I use a second plate, upside down.
It would reflect under the paper towel too then, therefor serving it’s purpose.
I don’t do anything in that list you just mentioned, and I will probably stop drinking tea from a bag now. This is helpful research.
But is it? How confident are you that this is your greatest exposure? Odds are there is something else in your life at least 100x as bad. And what does it mean that cellulose, a naturally occurring compound, releases 15x more microplastics than nylon? Or does iy? This study didn’t measure nanoplastics.
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.
how do we find the 100x as bad thing if we do not do research like this. The authors did not write this to provide you with a guide for life, they are instead trying to increase our collective knowledge. I wonder sometimes if folks understand how science works.
>they are instead trying to increase our collective knowledge
I'm not sure that's even clear since they seem to be conflating cellulose with microplastics.
i believe the bags are made from a mix of cellulose and plastic
That seems like something research could look at.
The problem is context. Lack of it. Good research contextualizes its findings.
Have to start somewhere with avoiding plastics. This is as good a place to start as any other.
I think we're simply responding to the list the OP gave — which many of us do not do.
You never have food or drink that was stored or served via plastic containers? How? I ask seriously - how do you live your life to entirely avoid this, while also not living a life so separate from society that you are drinking tea made from tea bags?
Many people drink tea not from tea bags to the point that "many" isn't really descriptive enough. If you're a tea aficionado, you definitely don't. Which means there's an entire market of people doing things like an aficionado even if they are not; see audiophiles. Only mass market large brands push the tea bag. Good tea comes packaged as loose leaf meant to be used in whatever strainer you have.
I never eat or drink anything heated in plastic when I can control it. Sure it may have been stored in plastic at some point, but not heated.
>I never eat or drink anything heated in plastic when I can control it.
Do you avoid restaurants and cafeterias completely?
Lose leaf tea is much better anyway. You can get multiple infusions out of it which is nice if you don't need the caffeine the second time around (it's quite water soluble and mostly all goes in the first infusion).
A second infusion with bags always just ends up kinda watery and sad. Something about the leaves being smaller...
Yep. I used to regularly drink high-grade ti guan yin (a.k.a. iron goddess), and I could often get 8 steeps and still have plenty of flavor.
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.
Look up "gongfu steeping", it is a well established method, e.g. "15 to 30 seconds for the first infusion, then add 10 seconds to each subsequent infusion. If it seems a bit weak, leave it for longer."
Where do you find plastic tea bags? I don't think I've ever seen one.
Most tea bags that you purchase anywhere use some level of plastics in their component materials and/or binding (especially this latter). The only safe options are metal strainers that you filter the tea with (and that hopefully don't have coatings on them that are harmful... boiling a new one would not be a bad idea before first use) or just loose leaf.
Mesh tea bags, like are used at Starbucks, are plastic.
“The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose.”
They aren’t pure plastic.
Those were three different bags, not all in one.
bourgie brands of tea come in little nylon pyramids instead of the normal paper/cloth bag.
In the study, they put 300 nylon/plastic bags into 1L of near-boiling water. Many bags are paper derivatives and not plastic. No need to completely stop enjoying tea.
How do you cook food?
It's not hard to cut out the exposure listed in the comment with a little effort and time, except for the steel thing which is a bit over the top.
it’s actually needed, see lucky fish: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish
Debatable efficacy.
Cast iron pots and pans
Not concerned about the chromium and vanadium present in most cast iron?
I'm not deeply into that topic, but the pan I use that's made of iron was 'burned-in' using linseed oil several times to create a non-sticky surface. Whatever that has as negative side-effects aside, that layer might trap the iron additives quite effectively.
Also, glass Pyrex Tupperware.
Steel and glass
It is well established that heating plastic in a culinary context distributes significantly more microplastic into your food.
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.
I absolutely agree that meaningful context would be helpful, but I don't see that as disqualifying. I appreciate that research is opportunistic, as often oriented toward discovery of new things not yet understood, as much about building up our factual understanding as interpretation.
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!"
I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container.
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.
> I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container.
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.
I'd be interested in seeing this measured. Probably it depends on how much abuse the plastic container receives. I don't think mine ever come in contact with something > 50°C, and the dish scraper I use isn't very pointy, but ymmv.
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.
>First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? >Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
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.
> ”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”
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!
I eat processed, ready-to-eat stuff at home, heavily use microwave for heating, but I don't do/use any of the things you mentioned. I generally prefer loose leaf tea, but sometimes tea bags are easier, so I only buy brands that use natural tea bags. It's possible to reduce exposure to pollutants if you're willing to sacrifice some convenience.
There is no evidence of harm. Your body continually rids itself of them. This is a lot of passion and angst over what may be nothing.
Tea drinkers in shambles
> First of all, what’s with the focus on tea bags?
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.
>First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
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...
One should avoid all the things which you mentioned and using a microwave at all.
The context is a comparison between good old paper tea bags.
> using a microwave at all
Why?
> good old paper
This study does not specifically mention paper tee bags. It mentions food contact paper but that’s something different.
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.
Agreed. While some people are nit picking the comment here as “well don’t do any of those things,” it still doesn’t quantify the danger.
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”
I mean, why not? I get your point but before wide encompassing studies and meta studies, a lot of things will be looked at because we can look at them. It's like asking why investigate dolphin language instead of all animal communication.
If one had to study the entirety of a subject it would be impossible to do so in many cases. It is entirely reasonable for a researcher to pick one piece of the puzzle and study that. No it does not give the entire picture but it may help us understand the greater picture.
Lastly if this was anywhere else besides HN there is a microwood entering you joke to be made.
These are all questions that are pretty easy to answer these days; perfectly appropriate for asking to an LLM or search engine.
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).
From the study linked in the article: "Overall, our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence on the pervasive nature of plastic pollution and its potential implications for human health. As the usage of plastics in food packaging continues to rise, scientific research and policymaking must address the challenges posed by MNPL contamination to ensure food safety and consumer well-being."
> 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.
I find it quite ironic how many people on HN have a superiority complex to sites like Reddit, yet suffer the same pitfalls. Not reading the source material and going off of headlines or snippets.
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.
Exactly. This is a study about the exposure and absorption parts of the equation. The science is ongoing. People who can't deal with anything less than total certainty don't understand the process.
this is from the same journal with the black plastic cooking utensils that has been remove from a major index. https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/journal-that-publishe...
Science loves proving science wrong. I'm glad science overcame science on the issue of blqck plastic
Talking tea bags, this is a rabbit hole as a few sibling commenters pointed out already:
- most tea bags contain plastic themselves
- pretty much every bakery / small coffee place place serves tea in paper cups lined up with plastic, it's very difficult to get a tea in a proper ceramic cup those days
- waters heaters often have plastic lids
- pretty much every insulated thermos also has at least a plastic cover
For the last one, a friend has recently found some plastic-free thermos: https://www.kleankanteen.com/collections/plastic-free
Please share if you know others.
I think for most places in the world, tea is an activity done at home with own cups/glasses.
Or at least, say in China/Taiwan, the heated tea gets made cold in steel containers and then served cold in plastic cups (e.g. For milk tea) else all is ceramic.
The main point is that even who doesn't go to buy a tea elsewhere get in contact with microplastic. So, now many people might have to switch to loose leaf to avoid getting another source of microplastics in their daily lives.
Loose leaves are more inconvenient compared to tea bags. All else equal dont expect major adoption just for yet another health scare. People in general are lazy.
Not really interested in what others do with themselves, lifestyle is a personal choice. Although things like these, if found to have an impact, should be out of reach from the general public.
I find it interesting how for many (except for things like MSG and fats) previously thought "health scares", especially regarding plastic and the likes, have been found to be detrimental to our health and still people sneer at these initial studies. Given that, I'd personally rather err on the side of caution, especially when the change is so minute to be frivolous.
If someone told to stop eating, say, pizza then that would be a whole other story. But not using plastic with hot food/beverages? Not a big deal for me.
> So, now many people might have to switch to loose leaf to avoid getting another source of microplastics in their daily lives.
Doesn't this study show that cellulose releases microplastics as well? I assume tea leaves have cellulose in them, so best to avoid tea altogether.
If you are afraid of cellulose then you should stop eating any vegetables and fruits. They contain large amounts of cellulose also called "dietary fiber", which USDA says you need large amounts of: about 30 grams per day.
Doesn’t the first product (bamboo topped lid) have a rubber ring to seal it?
Also on the front page: the journal this study was published in was recently removed from a major index of journals for failing to meet quality criteria: https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/journal-that-publishe...
other big overlooked area — paper cups are covered inside with hydrophobic film that is made of plastic, and given extra hot water makes plasticisers get off substance, chances are all those paper cups are releasing lots of microplastics into hot water. ask for mugs folks.
The alternative for me isn't to ask for a mug, it's an argument for skipping all that and making it at home.
Yeah, coffee served in a paper cup even tastes like jank. When I can make coffee at home that is better than the cafes — why drink out?
Just make sure the mugs weren't washed with Jet Dry...
Avoiding toxic and questionable substances really does get exhausting after awhile. It's everywhere. I'm able to draw a reasonable line (for me) without getting too nuts about it. Hoping AI ends up helping with this.
what would AI do that human intelligence couldn't? Is it not a linear cause-and-effect relationship? more plastics cause more illness? (yes | no). If plastics are toxic, wouldn't we see for ourselves (thus NOT requiring AI) a proportionate increase in sickness in samples (people or animals) with higher plastic in their bodies? Why is the message more profound if AI tells you versus a human team of college researchers?
"What would seeing information on a computer screen do for you that a book couldn't?"
Reducing friction of access to information, friend. That's what. Taking a label in a supermarket and immediately seeing what's good and bad about it. Increasing competitive pressure on companies who still use toxic ingredients. I could go on here but it seems like you just take issue with "AI" as a concept because it is trivial to come up with many ways in which AI would help here.
if humans cant figure out a causal link between microplastics and health issues, they shouldn't be working in that field. they already publish enough false information as-is, for those sweet juicy government "research" bucks. Last thing we need is a legion of retarded AI parrots saying "MuH AI aLgO sAiD sO!!!" without having the slightest clue what they are talking about.
> If plastics are toxic, wouldn't we see for ourselves (thus NOT requiring AI) a proportionate increase in sickness in samples (people or animals) with higher plastic in their bodies?
Yeah man I notice microplastics in tissue samples from my sick friends all the time. Haven’t you?
Or are they coated with wax/parafin?
Growing up, paper cups were all coated in wax, but I can't remember the last time I'd seen one coated in wax in the US, it's been at least a decade. Back then I remember being cautioned against using paper cups for hot drinks as it would melt the parafin (which wasn't great to drink) and then the paper would get soggy. Hot drinks to go were mostly served in styrofoam back then, while they are mostly plastic coated paper now. So that was probably a small step forward, although reusable ceramic or metal is better than either.
I remember encountering those — meant for cold beverages. When you hit them with hot water a kind of wax film floats to the top.
“Chances are” is not science, it’s just obsessing over the current Scary Thing. You’re just making things up.
Your own comment is also not science. Scientific results (particular testing conditions and results) need to be interpreted and actions decided on in the real world. Policy is not science either.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
> Several studies in the past have shown that harmful chemicals and substances can leach from paper and paperboard-based food packaging into the food meant for human consumption (Choi et al., 2002, Hansen et al., 2013, Schaider et al., 2017, Trier et al., 2011, Trier et al., 2018, Deshwal et al., 2019, Vandermarken et al., 2019).
https://youtu.be/i5611OvTFGM?feature=shared&t=5289
> "BPA, phthalates, plasticisers etc. are not chemically bound to substance they added too, and under heat they come out [...] you don't want to mix these with your food, but the worst thing to do is to put it in the heated environment" — Dr. Shanna Swan, Ph.D
To all those who are asking "Why teabags?", it's in the introduction section of the study.
> 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).
At this point the question might be, what doesn't release micro plastics.
I don't use tea bags, all my tea is loose leaf, but I'm sure it's still got micro plastics somewhere in it
If you home-compost you get used to finding tea bag skeletons in the compost. For years I used to rip open the used tea bag, compost the tea and discard the bag.
In the last few years the largest two brands here (Ireland: Lyons and Barrys) have gone somewhere between "plastic free" and "biodegradable" (but not home-compostable). 95% of tea is sold in the form of tea bags here. https://livinglightlyinireland.com/2021/02/12/plastic-free-t... (article is from 2021, I think the title is suffering from a Wordpress date placholder)
I throw the whole teabag, rope and all, into the compost and the mealworms make it into incomprehensible brown slush along with the rest of the pile in a few days. It’s always way more productive using insects in the compost.
Thanks for this; have been buying Barry’s lately in US
Watch out who you shake hands with, you might absorb micro plastics from them if they use a lot of Tupperware.
Is celulose a 'microplastic' though? Obviosly most tea bags are not made of plastic, at least historically...
These days many tea bags use polymers in their glue; and I don't think this article implied anywhere that cellulose is microplastic:
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose
cellulose on its own is not a plastic but they make bioplastics out of cellulose that are plastics.
What materials do different brands of tea make their tea bags out of, I wonder?
I wondered the same and unfortunately the manufacturers don’t publish the material of the tea bags. I am switching to loose tea and even when I only have tea bags i can take the tea out and brew it in reusable metal thing.
Nicer teas (pricier usually) come in cotton muslins - https://www.mariagefreres.com/en/tea.html?conditionnement=47. Their Marco Polo tea is my once a year splurge. The bag is tied with string - no glue.
Here's a pretty complete list of UK brands: https://moralfibres.co.uk/the-teabags-without-plastic/
The article made me check Yorkshire Tea and I'm not really quite sure. How bad are "plant-based plastics"?
> made from natural fibres like wood pulp and the seal is made with PLA - an industrially compostable, plant-based plastic
> ... so we're following WRAP's advice and avoiding the phrase "plastic free"
https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/our-packaging
https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/plastic-in-tea-bags...
I believe PLA decomposes, unlike petroleum based plastics. I don't have a link for you though.
Should be a law to put the materials used on all products, not just foods.
fascinating how one piece of bad journalism disqualifies whole research - we already have 2 comments (and I was about to post the 3rd) here about "why cellulose is in the list of microplastics?"
in my case I opened the news story with a question "what microplastics even are there in a paper bag??", then saw the sentence "The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose."
I think it's just worded badly. They were testing three different bags.
One day, I happened to watch a Starbucks worker make my iced Americano.
Imagine my surprise after a decade of feeling safe from microplastics by ordering iced, when they dripped 93C coffee straight into the venti plastic cup. Ice and water were then added, resulting in the perfect crime– an ice cold drink with no sign that it was made with hot water in disposable plastic.
Suffice it to say, my trust in corporations regarding our health is not high anymore. When ordering, I now ask for water before espresso.
I can taste and feel the chemicals in tea bags, so I always wash the bags with cold water, then a first draw of boiling water, then I fill it up. Feels much cleaner.
When dealing with our highly processed factory food products that come to you direct from a factory, a first wash with clean water is usually a good bet.
Use glassware, a metal filter, and loose tea leaves / herbs, "issue" solved. I don't get the affinity of people to ready-made tea in bags anyway; to me, that's not tea but "industrial dust"...
Oh, and you'll not need to put tea in "boiling water", 60-80°C are suitable.
> The paper is published in the journal Chemosphere.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42494733
> The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals after failing to meet quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch.
>On December 16, Clarivate—a scholarly publication analytics company—removed the journal Chemosphere from its platform, the Web of Science, which is a key index for academic journals.
Curiously, it seems the best way to reduce (though not avoid) micro plastic exposure from tea bags is to switch from cellulose tea bags to plastic ones – nylon:
> 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.
I'll take the micro cellulose particles. I already get cellulose in my food and I know my gut bacteria can digest small quantities.
or use a small metal or ceramic bowl to hold the tea -> zero plastic involved.
The nylon strength and stability making for counterintuitive trade-offs yet again. It's a ridiculously underrated material. (Does it fare worse or better if reused? I don't have a clue, but there are reusable nylon bags.)
Anyway, particle size probably matters, and I'm not sure it wins on that count.
Also anyway, you can get a steel tea holder, so the best way is to completely avoid plastics here. You can also probably get your leaves much cheaper in 200g or 1kg bags.
Sure. I use whole leaf, brew it in a glass cup, and pass it through a stainless steel sieve. Bags seem wasteful on so many levels.
Well, no, because those measurements are per ml. A nylon bag uses many more mls than a paper bag using plastic glue.
In this study, they placed 300 tea bags in 1 liter of near-boiling water. For those asking "why tea bags?" they're widely used and easy to research. Putting 300 tea bags into a container is much easier than sequentially microwaving a liter of water in 300 different plastic containers to measure the impact of microwaving food in plastic.
I don't know about tea bags, but guys, do yourself, your health and your finances a favor and buy this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DF1ZHXPG
It works surprisingly well, the coffee tastes better and it is not messy.
I just use a French Press.
We did for years, and even have a pretty cool one with dual filtration that prevented almost all grit. (the Espro) However, I didn't enjoy the wasted coffee and cleanup, and found that using refillable pods used less coffee and mess for the same product.
The annoying cleanup and wasted coffee seems specific to the espro. Cleaning a normal one is really quick and I don't mind the remainder of fines as they quickly settle at the bottom of the cup.
We've used refillable pods for years now.
Yeah. Same shit with water. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2024/1/10/stu...
Currently, I buy Pellegrino at Costco. But probably I just should get a sodastream with a glass bottle and filter my tap water.
Shipping water from Italy. Fucking insane. Maybe I should open my own bottling company with glass bottles.
I filter my tap water because the water where I live tastes like mud sometimes. (No, I'm not making that up. And yeah, they've been working on it.)
I use an inexpensive carbon block filter that sits on my countertop and connects to the faucet with a little diverter valve. It works OK at reducing the taste issue here.
But I'm in no way under the impression that doing so somehow reduces the water's exposure to plastics. The pipes in the house are plastic. The pipes under the street, if recent, are plastic. The filters themselves are plastic.
I could get fancy and put in a nice reverse osmosis system, but that's just layers of differently-shaped plastic.
For me, the solution is to simply not worry about the things I cannot change.
(Although I guess I could go off the deep end and built a still... But sheesh.)
The carbon filter should get rid of microplastics.
What is your setup? Can you post Amazon links?
Eh? It's a carbon filter wrapped in plastic mesh, and the carbon part itself is a block that is bound together with plastics. :)
But if you want one, it is an iSpring CKC1C. Sets up quick, takes generic/COTS replacement filters.
(I used to use a Pur filter on the faucet and that also worked well, but it was filtering a lot of stuff that isn't an issue with my tap water, and the razor blade business model of vendor lock-in was more expensive to support than I preferred.)
We do filter all of our water our coffee maker uses through a Zero Water Filter, which supposedly removes a significant amount.
Cafelat Robot
Nothing but metal and silicone.
There are tons of companies that have tea bags made out of biodegradable materials such as tree bark. Or if you don’t have access, consider a metal steeper and loose tea. Unbelievable the stuff people just shove in their gullet with no inspection.
To be fair, if you live in a developed country, you have organizations like the FDA which "should" be vetting the "food" on store shelves as "safe".
Now whether or not they actually do a good job at that task is a different question.
It's unfortunate that you'd expect millions of people to individually "do research" (i.e. consult their crystal-stroking astrologist nutjob friend on Facebook). There is no reasonable way for individuals to make informed decisions regarding each individual item they may eat.
The Good Place has a great little clip about just the difficulty of buying a tomato: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8m_5HDZF7w
I don’t expect millions of people to do research, I expect people to look at the thing in front of them and think, “wait what is this made of? It looks like plastic, maybe I should be skeptical.”
However if the country is going to be based on lobbying efforts you better damn well be able to do a little research.
There is a reasonable way to make informed decisions. It starts with skepticism and not just shoving food into your face because it’s popular.
Why should the average consumer be concerned about plastic? Plastic food packaging has been the norm my whole life.
You're asking a consumer to do what a regulatory institution should do.
A regulatory institution that’s constantly politicized and lobbied for corporations to have profits maximized will do the right thing. You are asking to be treated like cattle at that point.
You're expecting cattle not to act like cattle.
We all are cattle to institutions. Maybe you're someone that fact-checks the FDA's science, but do you also fact-check the Dept of Ed's pedagogy, or the federal reserve's fiscal policy?
We need strong institutions that act in the interests of the average citizen. You're right that we don't have that now, but fixing broken institutions is more realistic than everyone becoming genius polymaths with infinite free time for research.
I’m just suggesting ways for people to help themselves. All this “but the government should do it for me” talk while ideal isn’t something that can be accomplished today. Furthermore a consumer reports subscription is very valuable to bridge the gap and they’re entirely donation based publication (and impressively thick with information). HN readers may be interested in this article on microplastics in General Mills products:
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the...
> I expect people to look at the thing in front of them and think, “wait what is this made of? It looks like plastic, maybe I should be skeptical.”
They’ve done that in this case, and have reasonably concluded that the tea bags are made of paper and are therefore safe. Fuck them for being wrong I guess?
Good luck meeting that expectation with people doing their weekly grocwries.
Dreamy looks in the distance while difficult questions are being answered, precise estimations based on looks and tons of furious googling happening among the isles for each of the 113 items bought that day. And then realizing 109 of those are somehow interacting with plastics anyway, and there is nothing better in the shop.
People have too much on their plate to grind their lives to halt for 1 out of too many worries just for groceries.
Yes it’s tragic but that’s the world you’re asking for, people not to have to think because it’s hard. You’re validating that with some ridiculous scenario. Let’s simplify it: is the consumable touching plastic? It’s got plastic in or on it. Is it processed food? It’s got plastic in or on it.
If you want to take the approach where you buy a bunch of stuff and then sit down for hours auditing everything you spent money on, then that’s on you. Consider that if the issue is so extensive you can do the analysis piecemeal if paranoia of it all causes you to be exhausted.
Or don’t wait for reports like this and a politicized regulatory agency in the age of hysteria to make the decisions for you.
If you buy tea from Starbucks in North America you're getting a nylon teabag. Maybe I should be more paranoid about microplastics but I avoid them because I can't just toss them in the compost like I can with paper- or silk-based ones.
Cellulose is microplastic? I wonder what paper straws shed?
Cellulose is supposed to be dietary fiber. For which there is a recommended daily intake amount.
>A study by the Mutagenesis Group of the UAB Department of Genetics
If I drink this tea will I gain latent mutant powers?
I must be damn near made out of micro plastics by now. I shouldn't stand close to the fire.
One solution is cut the bags with scissors and use the leaves. I remember those metal pods with a chain. Before tea bags became a thing.
That's why most tea bags in Germany are made from starch. Land of high tech engineering, I guess.
Most tea bags in Germany aren't made from starch. Am I missing something?
It’s just one of those areas where we weren’t quite fast enough to catch up with the U.S. in copying their mistakes. Though I think it is true that the tea bag used to be a German idea.
I switched to tea balls simply because I could taste the bags. I guess this is an added bonus.
Why don't people just use stainless steel tea eggs??
hopefully, they did find some traces of tea in those tea-bags
This is why we switched back to loose leaf tea + high quality porcelain (Chinese porcelain has too much lead in it) + stainless steel strainers. When you do this, all of sudden the quality of the tea makes a huge difference. You learn what "second flush Assam" means, for example.
damn, i've been drinking bagged green tea 3x a day ...
Just get a tea infuser, open the bag and put it in the infuser.
Not surprising. I’ve always assumed this was the case.
This is probably the lead of the 21st century, something all over that we have kind of known is bad but haven’t paid attention to. Add endocrine disruptors along with microplastics since the origin is similar.
In 50 years there will probably be a lot less plastic used in contact with food, and what is used will be formulated differently. It will be similar to the gradual removal of lead from everything.
So we know that microplastics are everywhere. The thing that doesn't really seem clear yet is whether microplastics are actually harmful. Polyethylene, for example, seems quite harmless. (There are also generally harmless substances that become harmful in the right shape, e.g. quartz as fine dust or fibers)
Maybe in the "western world", but look up asbestos use and mining and export in brazil, china, russia and you may be horrified.
Yeah and similar to lead (and asbestos as someone else mentioned), once you see it you can't really un-see it.
The idea of re-heating food by microwave in a plastic storage container, or purchasing anything acidic or liquid from the grocery store that's stored in a plastic or plastic-lined container elicits a similar feeling in my brain to sleeping under popcorn ceilings or drinking water from a house with lead pipe plumbing.
Yet, in the U.S. at leaste, people have been doing this literally for decades without thinking twice :/
Yup. Seems like a great idea at the time, until it is both such a great idea that it becomes ubiquitous and we start looking at it more closely.
Kind of a proverbial 'boiling the frog' problem. A little bit of handling lead pipes or pumping leaded gasoline or inhaling or ingesting microplastics won't do anything. But when modern life gets so we're all bathing in the stuff all the time, the big problems are revealed.
Right on. Gotta love 2024.
when i try to warn friends about this they think i'm just a complete screwball.
Absolute garbage study. Leave this on reddit and tiktok.
