You May Be Drinking Microplastics. Here's How to Avoid Them in Water
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles that are smaller than 5 millimeters in size. They can originate from a variety of sources, including our bathroom, kitchen, and laundry.
Another common source of microplastics is bottled water. A study published in January 2024 found nearly a quarter of a million microplastics per liter of bottled sample.
That is about 10 to 100 times more than we previously thought.
Microplastic in drinking water
Researchers at Columbia and Rutgers Universities took water from three different brands. They estimated that a typical one-liter bottle contains 240,000 microplastics in them.
What surprised them was that most of the particles were not PET, the material used to make plastic bottles. They found more polyamide and polystyrene, suggesting that these nano and microparticles aren't just seeping out of the bottle.
They're sneaking into the bottled water during the filling and purification process.
Although the research on the impact of microplastics on human health has not been conclusive, the initial studies show that they can pose serious health risks.
They're small enough to enter our bloodstream, potentially lodging in our heart and brain, or even crossing the placenta to reach unborn babies.
While it’s hard to eliminate microplastics from our lives, we can reduce them.
Avoiding microplastics in water
One of the easiest ways to avoid microplastics in your drinking water is to avoid plastic bottles. Instead, you can use stainless steel or glass bottles.
Use tap water instead of bottled water, if possible. Since tap water isn’t perfect either, researchers in China have found that boiling hard tap water can produce calcium carbonate, which forms crystallized encapsulations around microplastics that can be scraped or removed by pouring the water through a coffee filter.
This technique removed up to 90% of the microplastics in samples of hard water and up to 25% of the microplastics in soft water.
While it's challenging to eliminate plastic from one area of our lives, we can reduce our overall plastic consumption. Check out some of our latest guides that can help you with that:
- 5 Places Microplastics Are Hiding in Your Kitchen
- Simple ways to eliminate microplastics from your laundry
- 7 Sustainable Brands for a Plastic-Free Bathroom
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