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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 1/13/24: Bottled water and a whole lot of microplastics inside [1]

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Date: 2024-01-13  

Sometimes the news is so gobsmacking you really don’t quite know what to do with it. I have no doubt many saw this — or something like it -- floating across their social media feeds this week.

As reported by Joseph Winters and published in Grist:

At this point, it’s common knowledge that bottled water contains microplastics — fragments of the insidious material that can be as small as a bacterial cell. But the problem is much worse than previously known: It turns out that bottled water harbors hundreds of thousands of even tinier pieces of the stuff. A paper published Monday used a novel technique to analyze one-liter samples of bottled water for plastic granules, going down to just 50 to 100 nanometers in length — roughly the width of a virus. They found nearly a quarter of a million of these tiny particles per liter, about 10 to 100 times more than previously published estimates.

Like most everyone else on the planet I’ve had my share of bottled water. I’m not one of those folks who keeps cases of it around, nor am I unfortunate enough to live in a place that has little or no potable tap water (some 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, according to the World Health Organization), but I’ll admit my reasons for not drinking more of it have never stemmed from concerns about its effect on my personal health. Rather — again, like many people who limit their use of it — my concerns have always been about the plastic packaging, its devastating environmental impact, particularly the havoc it wreaks on marine and other species. Clearly, there may be even more than that to be concerned about now.

Winters notes that the study was conducted by beaming two lasers through a membrane used to filter the water being tested. The lasers were “calibrated to recognize the chemical bonds binding the nanoplastic particles, then the “particles” were counted. As Winters reports, a typical one liter bottle contained about 240,000 of them. Surprisingly enough, however, most of the particles were not the same type of plastic that makes up the bottle itself, but “particles of polyamide (a type of nylon) and polystyrene, suggesting that the pollutants are, in a bit of irony, getting into bottled water as a result of the filling and purification process.” Not to worry, though: at least one brand they tested displayed mostly nanoplastic particles from the bottling material itself.

Winters writes:

The findings have significant implications for human health, since nanoplastics are small enough to pass through the gastrointestinal tract and lungs. After entering the bloodstream, they can lodge in the heart and brain, and can even cross through the placenta to infiltrate unborn babies. It’s not yet clear how the particles impact the body, but toxicologists worry that they could leach chemicals or release pathogens that they picked up while floating around in the environment. Some research suggests potential damage to DNA and the brain, as well as to the immune, reproductive, and nervous systems.

The researchers note that the potential toxicity associated with this level of exposure to microplastic-laden bottled water is unknown, but common sense would appear to suggest that the more you drink of it, the higher probability that any toxic effects could manifest themselves (It’s frankly unsettling how little determinative research data there actually is about the migration, neurotoxicity and absorption of microplastics in humans, despite there being plenty of research about its potential effects). However, as noted in the New York Times:

“[I]f a particular microplastic or nanoplastic is present in a tissue, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it causes damage,” said Dr. Konstantinos Lazaridis, a gastroenterologist who studies the role of environmental factors in liver disease at Mayo Clinic. It’s possible that tiny plastic pieces simply pass through most people’s bodies without causing much harm, Dr. Lazaridis said. Or it might be that these environmental particles only have an impact in people who already have genetic predispositions to disease, he said. Some researchers have theorized that microplastics may be behind disease patterns that haven’t yet been explained by other causes, such as the increase in colorectal cancers among young people, or the uptick in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. But studies are far from conclusive.

Perhaps it’s just me but despite the inconclusiveness of the data the very idea that I am consuming a quarter million nanoparticles of plastics with every liter of bottled water doesn’t sit particularly well. One of the co-authors of the paper itself is an environmental chemist at Columbia. Unsurprisingly, he opts for tap water whenever possible, although it’s not clear from the article whether this is in reaction to the study or simply his expertise about plastic contamination in general.

Winters interviewed associate professor Sherri Mason from Penn State (she studies microplastics but was not involved in the subject paper), who noted that the research could actually spur federal legislative action:

Mason said the research should inspire action from U.S. policymakers, who have the power to limit plastic production by supporting the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act — a federal bill that was reintroduced in Congress for the third time last October — or by endorsing plastic reduction as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

That legislation is sponsored, of course, by a Democrat (Sen. Jeff Merkley), its co-sponsors are all Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders) and it is supported by more than three quarters of likely voters in this country. It is opposed by the Plastics Industry Association as well as the massively financed oil and gas lobby. Which, sadly, means it has probably no chance of being passed.

But that fact shouldn’t prevent people from simply abstaining from buying bottled water, particularly since — in addition to all the other pollution and ecological problems it causes — it now appears that their personal health might actually be at stake.

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