6mo ago

Tea bags releasing 'millions' of microplastics into tea, study shows

www.dpa-international.com

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/52242140

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6mo ago

Tea bags releasing 'millions' of microplastics into tea, study shows

www.dpa-international.com /trends-and-features/urn:newsml:dpa.com:20090101:250109-99-540705/

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6mo ago

Tea bags releasing 'millions' of microplastics into tea, study shows

www.dpa-international.com /trends-and-features/urn:newsml:dpa.com:20090101:250109-99-540705/

31 comments

polymer-based commercial tea bags
This is important. Tea bags can be made from a variety of materials, in Europe that's usually plant matter. So literally keep calm and drink tea.
- Or, buy loose leaf and use a strainer - steel if you think you can't tell the difference (like me), or ceramic if you think you can. It's more economical, too.
  
  I don't have easy access to loose-leaf tea, unfortunately.
  Also, this is not specifically directed at you but it's on my mind lately: loose-leaf tea is more effort than tea bags. This is not a big deal for healthy people but please don't shame chronically ill people for using tea bags.
  (This comment was eaten on my first attempt, sorry if it shows up twice)
  
  I find it way too frustrating to clean the strainer out, I personally just buy unbleached paper tea bags (i am 100% sure they don't have plastic) and put my loose leaf into that.
- The filter paper used to produce teabags with a string and tag attached does not need to contain plastic polymer fibres: these teabags close by folding, and are secured by stitching or stapling, rather than by heat sealing.
  However, many teabag producers (including organic brands) still choose to use paper with plastic (polypropylene) fibres to add strength to their teabags.
  https://treadingmyownpath.com/2018/04/05/plastic-teabags/
- I've never even seen polymer based tea bags.
  Where would they sell that crap? Lemme guess?
What do you mean plastic mesh heated to near boiling temperatures causes a release of microscopic plastic particles? That just doesn't make any sense at all!
- Many tea bags are made from paper with added plastic fibers for extra strength. As you heat them, like when pouring hot water over them, some of the particles (both paper, plastic, and whatever other additives) release into your cup.
  
  And I assume next you'll tell me that pouring boiling water into plastic bottles or maybe even Styrofoam cups is another way people introduce microplastics into their systems unwittingly. That's just too bizarre.
This study is unscientific garbage and should be retracted.
Their “simulation” of making tea involved 300 teabags boiled in 600ml of water at 95 C while being stirred at 750rpm for an unspecified amount of time. They then took counts using undiluted samples of that liquid.
It isn’t clear why they chose such an absurd methodology, but it is absolutely spurious to draw conclusions from this about teabags used under normal conditions.
- That's basically blending it...
  That said, we do know that water bottles sitting in the sun (i.e. heat + UV) causes leeching so I wonder about things like soda cans (not just the bottles). I would imagine that with tea bags with plastic present, boiling it and steeping for a few minutes would likely result in some contamination.
  Which really makes one wonder... just why would you include plastic in something that will be ingested.
- This was published in the same journal that published the black plastic study that had a huge math error. Also seem to have problems with conflicts of interest and studies changing authors immediately prior to publication. Dubious at best
  
  Good point. This journal was just delisted from Clarivate because of integrity violations as well.
Yorkshire Tea use compostable tea bags. I think most of the other big UK brands do as well but you should only be drinking Yorkshire.
- Found spiff's Lemmy account.
- Yorkshire Gold, two sugars, splash of evaporated milk.
When we're talking about molecules, millions is usually an extreme understatement. PPB (parts per billion) is a common measure for contaminants.
But that's still an enormous quantity. Remember Avogadro's number (used to relate count to grams) is on the 10^23 scale (aka thousands of billions of trillions). Even 999 million is a drop in the ocean there.
EDIT: The journal abstract lists the leached nanoparticles as 10^9 (trillions) per mL, and the uptake by human-derived intestine cells as 100 micrograms/mL. So yeah this is just coverage by a journalist who can't math.
Are plastic teabags an American thing? Most Canadian and british tea come in paper bags... wish there was more information in this article its so vague.
- I can't remember the brand, but yeah. Plastic teabags are a thing and not just in the US.
  They're wierd little triangle nets.
  But no worries. If you drink proper tea, you'll never encounter them.
- Nestle
Teabags in prepacked tea annoying the crap out of me, why can't they be paper it is literally just as good.
I buy my tea loose and then spoon it into unbleached paper tea bags. I find this a good compromise between prepacked tea bags and use a reusable steeper (which i hate cleaning out and rarely remember to do so.
- I use a steel tea stainer, easy to clean with a metal scrubber or citric acid if it's really bad.
so that's why i prefer the flavor of big brand tea bags...

31 comments