New Study Finds Your Favorite Hot Drinks Might Contain More Microplastics Than Expected
Microplastics pose serious risks to both the environment as well as human health. When talking about nature, these tiny particles pollute the water bodies and harm marine life. On the other hand, for humans, these tiny plastic particles can accumulate in the body, potentially causing several issues that can even turn fatal in some cases. A new study titled 'Synthetic microplastics in hot and cold beverages from the UK market: Comprehensive assessment of human exposure via total beverage intake' was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment and has uncovered alarming levels of microplastics in some of the world’s most popular hot drinks.
The findings of the study have raised some serious concerns about what we’re consuming in our daily cups. This crucial study was done by a team of researchers from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. For this research, several hot and cold drinks from well-known UK brands were purchased from various supermarkets. The team reportedly tested 31 different samples, running five trials on each, for a total of 155 measurements. Shockingly, microplastics were detected in every beverage tested, but the highest levels showed up in hot drinks such as tea (49 to 81 MPs per liter).
Researchers believe that the heat likely causes more plastic particles to leach from the packaging into the liquid. Professor Mohamed Abdallah, who was also one of the lead researchers for the new study, told The Independent, "We noted that a lot of research in the microplastics sphere is focusing on drinking water – tap water, bottled water – and we've also released a paper from the UK on water. But we realized that people don't only drink water during their day. You drink tea, coffee, and juices." He added, "We found a ubiquitous presence of microplastics in all the cold and hot drinks we looked at. Which is pretty alarming."
As reported by The Independent, the professor continued, "We're consuming millions of teas and coffees every morning, so it's something to look at. There should be legislative action from the government and also from international organizations to limit human exposure to microplastics … they're everywhere." The researchers also examined iced coffee and tea, but came to the conclusion that these cold beverages contained far lower amounts of microplastics. Another pattern that was observed was that expensive teabags released the most microplastics, with about 24 to 30 particles per cup.
In the case of hot coffee, the experts claimed that the disposable cups were likely the main source of microplastics found in the samples. Meanwhile, in the past, studies have also shown that people are regularly exposed to microplastics by breathing them in and by eating contaminated seafood like fish and shellfish, as reported by UNDP. Not just this, it has also been estimated that adults may take in around 2,000 microplastic particles on average each year just from the salt they regularly consume.
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