[HN Gopher] Commercial tea bags release microplastics, entering ...
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Commercial tea bags release microplastics, entering human cells
Author : wglb
Score : 322 points
Date : 2024-12-23 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| timthelion wrote:
| Is celulose a 'microplastic' though? Obviosly most tea bags are
| not made of plastic, at least historically...
| LegitShady wrote:
| cellulose on its own is not a plastic but they make bioplastics
| out of cellulose that are plastics.
| mandmandam wrote:
| 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
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| What materials do different brands of tea make their tea bags out
| of, I wonder?
| vinni2 wrote:
| 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.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Should be a law to put the materials used on all products, not
| just foods.
| mhandley wrote:
| Here's a pretty complete list of UK brands:
| https://moralfibres.co.uk/the-teabags-without-plastic/
| drunkonvinyl wrote:
| 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.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| 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...
| alwa wrote:
| 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...
| )_
| LegitShady wrote:
| there are cellulose bioplastics maybe thats what they were
| testing?
| alwa wrote:
| 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?
| mandmandam wrote:
| > 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...
| r00fus wrote:
| So that's what I remember hearing this years ago: those silky
| looking teabags diffuse microplastics. Easy to avoid those.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Er, no. Those silky ones were likely _worse_ , but a lot of
| the regular looking paper ones have polymer glues releasing
| microplastic _as well_.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| 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.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| PG Tips is a brand that sells those pyramid-shaped
| teabags that I believe are held together with the glue.
| biggestdummy wrote:
| 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.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| pavon wrote:
| 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?
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| thatcat wrote:
| 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
| alwa wrote:
| 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...
| 42lux wrote:
| I've never seen glued teabags in Europe it's usually just a
| metal staple holding them together.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| The United Kingdom has a mixture of both types for sale in
| supermarkets.
| shreddit wrote:
| How do these "new" pyramid teabags stay in form? I don't
| think they use staples...
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| 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.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| "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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I also wonder about those re-usable Keurig pods that are
| typically a plastic frame with plastic mesh.
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> 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...
| perihelions wrote:
| Related thread,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42494733 ( _" Journal
| that published faulty black plastic study removed from
| science index (arstechnica.com)"_, 63 comments)
| hammock wrote:
| >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)
|
| Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| thatcat wrote:
| 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
| moffkalast wrote:
| 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 60degC, 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?!
|
| https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/our-packaging
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Challenge accepted; I will endeavour to include the phrase
| "sodding tic tacs" into a Christmas dinner conversation.
|
| Top marks.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| 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.
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| 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
| malfist wrote:
| 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
| seniortaco wrote:
| Watch out who you shake hands with, you might absorb micro
| plastics from them if they use a lot of Tupperware.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| 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)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Thanks for this; have been buying Barry's lately in US
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| 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.
| api wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Maybe in the "western world", but look up asbestos use and
| mining and export in brazil, china, russia and you may be
| horrified.
| gen220 wrote:
| 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 :/
| ahartmetz wrote:
| 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)
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| 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.
| saas_sam wrote:
| 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.
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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?
| relaxing wrote:
| > 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?
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| "Chances are" is not science, it's just obsessing over the
| current Scary Thing. You're just making things up.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| 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
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Or are they coated with wax/parafin?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I remember encountering those -- meant for cold beverages.
| When you hit them with hot water a kind of wax film floats to
| the top.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| julianeon wrote:
| The alternative for me isn't to ask for a mug, it's an argument
| for skipping all that and making it at home.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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?
| oidar wrote:
| 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...
| rc_mob wrote:
| Science loves proving science wrong. I'm glad science overcame
| science on the issue of blqck plastic
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| 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."
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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?
| bowmessage wrote:
| 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.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Where do you find plastic tea bags? I don't think I've ever
| seen one.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Mesh tea bags, like are used at Starbucks, are plastic.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| "The tea bags used for the research were made from the
| polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose."
|
| They aren't pure plastic.
| gaoshan wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| bourgie brands of tea come in little nylon pyramids instead
| of the normal paper/cloth bag.
| bagels wrote:
| How do you cook food?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| 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.
| woleium wrote:
| it's actually needed, see lucky fish:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Debatable efficacy.
| marliechiller wrote:
| Cast iron pots and pans
| bagels wrote:
| Not concerned about the chromium and vanadium present in
| most cast iron?
| fhackenberger wrote:
| 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.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Also, glass Pyrex Tupperware.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Steel and glass
| brookst wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think we're simply responding to the list the OP gave --
| which many of us do not do.
| woleium wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >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.
| rc_mob wrote:
| Have to start somewhere with avoiding plastics. This is as
| good a place to start as any other.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| 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?
| bowmessage wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I never eat or drink anything heated in plastic when I
| can control it.
|
| Do you avoid restaurants and cafeterias completely?
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 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...
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| 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.
| skirmish wrote:
| 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."
| nycdatasci wrote:
| 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.
| vasco wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| dboreham wrote:
| Isn't the wet paper towel and EM reflector? I use wax paper
| fwiw.
| almostnormal wrote:
| I use a second plate, upside down.
| righthand wrote:
| It would reflect under the paper towel too then, therefor
| serving it's purpose.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| What makes you think there isn't BPA in your paper towels?
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21939283/
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| imglorp wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| You may be interested in Weck jars too that are made of
| glass for storage and are very affordable. They have glass
| lids.
| bityard wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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?
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| c0redump wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| jajko wrote:
| No I didnt and I dont know anybody who did. Unless you
| count proper nutjobs seeing conspiracies everywhere and
| world controlled by nanochips etc.
| righthand wrote:
| Yes you bought right into it. New thing? It must be fine!
| Framing skeptics as nutjobs is exactly what caused the
| ignorance.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| A broken clock can be right twice per day, but that
| doesn't mean that it is ever useful.
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| icanhelp wrote:
| > '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.'
|
| It's called "having common fucking sense." Try it some
| time.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| 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.
| yreg wrote:
| > using a microwave at all
|
| Why?
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > good old paper
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21939283/
| sharpshadow wrote:
| 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.
| mandmandam wrote:
| 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).
| protonbob wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/
| woleium wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.mountainwoodworker.com/articles/toxic_woods.pdf
| scns wrote:
| Wenge and Oak too.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > 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.
| protonbob wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It means "we haven't ruled it out yet". And given the
| difficulty of conclusively demonstrating a negative,
| that's a very weak claim.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| "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.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| Elegant and pithy answer to a well asked question.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| And plastics are full of endocrine disruptors, which are
| pretty bad for human health too.
| dbingham wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/envhealth.3c00052
| brokegrammer wrote:
| > 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.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| 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"?
| brokegrammer wrote:
| 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.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > 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.
| zug_zug wrote:
| 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."
| brokegrammer wrote:
| 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.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >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.
| thayne wrote:
| It doesn't mean unsafe either.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| 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.
| whatshisface wrote:
| _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.
| therealcamino wrote:
| So...perhaps worthy of further study, maybe including to
| understand where exposure comes from, and whether the
| particles are absorbed? Like this study.
| rendaw wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog
| and get in the way of natural processes mechanically
|
| Source?
| rendaw wrote:
| 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).
| skirmish wrote:
| > 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
| sillyfluke wrote:
| 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.
| lkbm wrote:
| > "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/S004565
| 352...
| giantg2 wrote:
| We _know_ that some plastics mimic hormones (eg estrogens),
| which can cause problems (eg estrogenic cancers).
| thayne wrote:
| > "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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The body does need trace amounts of chromium.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Wasn't asbestos non reactive?
| userbinator wrote:
| _Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don 't exist in
| nature._
|
| They are short-chain hydrocarbons, which most definitely
| exist in nature.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > 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.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| 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.
| wyxz wrote:
| 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.
| therealcamino wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > 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.
| xattt wrote:
| 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.
| therealcamino wrote:
| The paper describes the three kinds of tea bags tested, and
| how the results differ between them.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
| prophesi wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/cvjac
| Suppafly wrote:
| now you'll probably get some sort of micro-something
| coming from the non-stick coating inside that thing.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The inside is silicon. Plumbing might be plastic, hard to
| tell.
| semiquaver wrote:
| > and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved
|
| This is about certain tea bags which are recognizably
| plastic, e.g. the ones pictured in
| https://scitechdaily.com/warning-plastic-teabags-release-
| mic...
| namuol wrote:
| 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/art
| icle/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.
| phatfish wrote:
| 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.
| BillTthree wrote:
| 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.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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 100degC. It just sits there in the mostly still
| water.
|
| Meanwhile, the plastic container might be in contact with
| fatty food way over 100degC. 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 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 >
| 50degC, 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.
| glenstein wrote:
| 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!"
| 14 wrote:
| 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.
| wyxz wrote:
| > 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.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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.
| lkbm wrote:
| >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...
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"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!
| tonygiorgio wrote:
| 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"
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Tea drinkers in shambles
| evrenesat wrote:
| 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.
| stevebmark wrote:
| 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.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >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.
| leobg wrote:
| 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.
| vinckr wrote:
| or use a small metal or ceramic bowl to hold the tea -> zero
| plastic involved.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Well, no, because those measurements are per ml. A nylon bag
| uses many more mls than a paper bag using plastic glue.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| leobg wrote:
| 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.
| Beijinger wrote:
| 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.
| ysleepy wrote:
| I just use a French Press.
| bdcravens wrote:
| 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.
| ysleepy wrote:
| 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.
| bdcravens wrote:
| We've used refillable pods for years now.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Yeah. Same shit with water. https://www.plasticpollutioncoali
| tion.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.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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.)
| cbdhsjshs wrote:
| Cafelat Robot
|
| Nothing but metal and silicone.
| keepamovin wrote:
| 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.
| hfgjbcgjbvg wrote:
| Right on. Gotta love 2024.
| jakub_g wrote:
| 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.
| xandrius wrote:
| 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.
| jajko wrote:
| 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.
| xandrius wrote:
| 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.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > 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.
| skirmish wrote:
| 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.
| highfrequency wrote:
| Doesn't the first product (bamboo topped lid) have a rubber
| ring to seal it?
| solnyshok wrote:
| hopefully, they did find some traces of tea in those tea-bags
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| 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
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| jajko wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| cbdhsjshs wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| 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.
| cbdhsjshs wrote:
| 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.
| righthand wrote:
| 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...
| frankus wrote:
| 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.
| 1over137 wrote:
| https://archive.is/mAXxS
| javier_e06 wrote:
| 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.
| hyperific wrote:
| 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).
| darrensharm wrote:
| That's why most tea bags in Germany are made from starch. Land of
| high tech engineering, I guess.
| leobg wrote:
| 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.
| morsch wrote:
| Most tea bags in Germany aren't made from starch. Am I missing
| something?
|
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teebeutel
| blueflow wrote:
| > 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.
| semiquaver wrote:
| 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...
| giantg2 wrote:
| I switched to tea balls simply because I could taste the bags. I
| guess this is an added bonus.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Not surprising. I've always assumed this was the case.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| 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.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Why don't people just use stainless steel tea eggs??
| AwaAwa wrote:
| Cellulose is microplastic? I wonder what paper straws shed?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Cellulose is supposed to be dietary fiber. For which there is a
| recommended daily intake amount.
| exabrial wrote:
| Absolute garbage study. Leave this on reddit and tiktok.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I must be damn near made out of micro plastics by now. I
| shouldn't stand close to the fire.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| 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.
| bithead wrote:
| >A study by the Mutagenesis Group of the UAB Department of
| Genetics
|
| If I drink this tea will I gain latent mutant powers?
| jaequery wrote:
| damn, i've been drinking bagged green tea 3x a day ...
| formvoltron wrote:
| when i try to warn friends about this they think i'm just a
| complete screwball.
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