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?
>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.
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.
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)
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.
There is some confusion about the materials used in teabags. Depending on the brand, they may be pure cellulose, or they may be made with plastics and PFAs.
Anyway, it comes across like they're trying to warn about nylon or polypropylene being unexpectedly found in disposable tea bags that appear to be made of paper; but in the details you read that the microplastics are "derived from several types of commercially available tea bags" - a category which certainly includes bags very openly and obviously made of nylon (reusable, pyramid-shaped ones). There are tons of places reporting on this new study, but the idea doesn't seem to be new at all. (It also seems like common sense to me that immersing a fine plastic mesh in your food, and allowing it to reach close to 100 degrees Celsius, might be a risk for this sort of thing.) It wasn't new in 2019, either: see e.g. https://ratetea.com/topic/nylon-tea-bags/30/ .
But then, a bit of searching suggests that the disposable paper bags may indeed contain a significant amount of plastic (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ , although the tone of the writing here seems rather fear-mongering). The reporting would be much better if it made this sort of thing clear.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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)
One day, I happened to watch a Starbucks worker make my iced Americano.
Imagine my surprise after a decade of feeling safe from microplastics by ordering iced, when they dripped 93C coffee straight into the venti plastic cup. Ice and water were then added, resulting in the perfect crime– an ice cold drink with no sign that it was made with hot water in disposable plastic.
Suffice it to say, my trust in corporations regarding our health is not high anymore. When ordering, I now ask for water before espresso.
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."
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] alwa|1 year ago|reply
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... )
[+] [-] jdietrich|1 year ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] odyssey7|1 year ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] hammock|1 year ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] Suppafly|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mandmandam|1 year ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|1 year ago|reply
https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
[+] [-] LegitShady|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zahlman|1 year ago|reply
Anyway, it comes across like they're trying to warn about nylon or polypropylene being unexpectedly found in disposable tea bags that appear to be made of paper; but in the details you read that the microplastics are "derived from several types of commercially available tea bags" - a category which certainly includes bags very openly and obviously made of nylon (reusable, pyramid-shaped ones). There are tons of places reporting on this new study, but the idea doesn't seem to be new at all. (It also seems like common sense to me that immersing a fine plastic mesh in your food, and allowing it to reach close to 100 degrees Celsius, might be a risk for this sort of thing.) It wasn't new in 2019, either: see e.g. https://ratetea.com/topic/nylon-tea-bags/30/ .
But then, a bit of searching suggests that the disposable paper bags may indeed contain a significant amount of plastic (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ , although the tone of the writing here seems rather fear-mongering). The reporting would be much better if it made this sort of thing clear.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crazygringo|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] oidar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rc_mob|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jakub_g|1 year ago|reply
- 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|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] highfrequency|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] semiquaver|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolayasdf123|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] julianeon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] double0jimb0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DoneWithAllThat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] saas_sam|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hyperific|1 year ago|reply
> 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).
[+] [-] malfist|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] mrspuratic|1 year ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] seniortaco|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] timthelion|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mandmandam|1 year ago|reply
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose
[+] [-] LegitShady|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] apt-apt-apt-apt|1 year ago|reply
Imagine my surprise after a decade of feeling safe from microplastics by ordering iced, when they dripped 93C coffee straight into the venti plastic cup. Ice and water were then added, resulting in the perfect crime– an ice cold drink with no sign that it was made with hot water in disposable plastic.
Suffice it to say, my trust in corporations regarding our health is not high anymore. When ordering, I now ask for water before espresso.
[+] [-] NooneAtAll3|1 year ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] keepamovin|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] slowmovintarget|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] blueflow|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] leobg|1 year ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] mandmandam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amanaplanacanal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] api|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nycdatasci|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Beijinger|1 year ago|reply
It works surprisingly well, the coffee tastes better and it is not messy.
[+] [-] righthand|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mmh0000|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] frankus|1 year ago|reply