Bottled water contains more plastic particles than previously estimated
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Mar 2024
A typical one-litre bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average according to a new study.
The peer-reviewed study, published in February 2024 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, evaluates bottled water for the presence of nanoplastics – plastic particles under one micrometer in length, or one-seventieth the width of a human hair.
The findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated, as earlier studies only accounted for microplastics, or pieces between one and 5,000 micrometres.
Nanoplastics pose a greater threat to human health than microplastics because they’re small enough to penetrate human cells, enter the bloodstream and impact organs. Nanoplastics can also pass through the placenta to the bodies of unborn babies. Scientists have long suspected their presence in bottled water but lacked the technology to identify individual nanoparticles.
The research team found 110,000 to 370,000 tiny plastic particles in each litre, 90% of them nanoplastics. A