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Summary
A new study from Spain’s Autonomous University of Barcelona reveals that tea bags made from nylon, polypropylene, and cellulose release billions of micro- and nanoplastic particles when steeped in boiling water.
These particles, which can enter human intestinal cells, may pose health risks, potentially affecting the digestive, respiratory, endocrine, and immune systems.
Researchers urge regulatory action to mitigate plastic contamination in food packaging.
Consumers are advised to use loose-leaf tea with stainless steel infusers or biodegradable tea bags to minimize exposure.
They report their findings as particles/ml, not particles/teabag. It should be obvious to you, as a scientist, that the particles/ml evolved given 1 teabag in 350ml of water will be massively different from the particles evolved with 1 teabag per 2ml of water.
Effectively, they are reporting effectively particles per half a teabag, right? So the numbers really should be double, is that what you’re saying?
As for the massively different concern, agreed, but maybe in a different way that doesn’t change my conclusions. Let me illustrate. My question to you is, if you dissolve (insert anything here) in a smaller volume of water, would you expect to get out more or less of the dissolved particles than if you were to dissolve the same thing in a larger volume?
My answer is less. The reason is because there are fewer water molecules to pull away particles when there’s a smaller volume of water. I suspect that their methodology underestimates the amount of plastic particles than if they were to use a very large chamber to brew 1 teabag to 350 ml water.
A saw another comment you made - Maybe you think that teabags are colliding with one another, but they are all spinning in the same direction in a beaker with a magnetic stirrer, so there’s not really all that much agitation.
I’m not totally sure what you mean by “get out more or less of the dissolved particles”, but I think I understand where your confusion lies. You keep referring to quantities, i.e. mass or particle counts. Their data is reporting these things as concentrations.
It should be obvious to you that 7.14g of salt dissolved in 2ml of water will produce a highly concentrated solution (saturated, in fact), whereas the same 7.14g dissolved in 350ml of water will produce a dilute solution. The concentration of the first one is 3.57g/ml, but the concentration of the second is 0.0204g/ml.
If somebody then turns around and says that 7.14g of salt dissolved in a mug of water will produce a concentration of 3.57g/ml, it should be readily apparent that they are incorrect. That is in effect what the authors are saying by reporting their results as particles/ml and then saying that those numbers are representative of what you might expect when brewing tea under normal conditions.
Does that all make sense?
Hmm, interesting. Maybe I’m being dense here. Let’s say that the teabag is that 7.14g of salt you mentioned - a chunk of salt, let’s say. They either A) try to dissolve 300 of those (each 7.14g) in 600 ml of water or B) they dissolve 1 chunk in 350 ml water. Like you said, they either report A) 3.57 g/ml or B) 0.204 g/ml.
I’m really just saying that either way, it’s still 7.14 g/chunk. Quite a lot of salt/particles per chunk/teabag.
I think maybe I don’t have an issue with them reporting the concentration because I didn’t interpret them as saying that they were saying there’s a billion particles per ml of a regular cup of brewed tea - it was always apparent to me that it was about the number of particles in a teabag (in this case, half a teabag with just a ml volume). I think we’re ultimately just arguing clarity of their language.