By Sandee
LaMotte
reporting March 2024
on the 5-Year study performed by the National Academy of Sciences
TAKE-AWAYS FROM THIS NEW STUDY:
- Harmful substances were not structurally
bound to the plastic, causing them to leach out
and migrate into air, water, food, and even the
human body, leading to harmful consequences.
- In addition to the expected leaching of the
harmful plastics, the study observed even worse
and unexpected findings: plastic particles were
being broken off by repeatedly opening and closing
the cap of the bottle, crushing the bottle while still
drinking from it, or subjecting these bottles to high
heat as in the car or storing in out buildings. - Using a glass or stainless steel containers remains
the safest way to consume water, experts say.
In a trailblazing study, researchers have discovered bottled water sold in stores can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated — nanoparticles so infinitesimally tiny they cannot be seen under a microscope.
At 1,000th the average
width of a human hair, nanoplastics are so teeny they can migrate through the
tissues of the digestive tract or lungs into the bloodstream, distributing
potentially harmful synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells, experts
say.
One liter of water — the equivalent of two
standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic
particles from seven types of plastics, of which 90% were identified as
nanoplastics and the rest were microplastics, according to the study.
Microplastics are polymer fragments that can
range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1
micrometer). Anything smaller is a nanoplastic that must be measured in
billionths of a meter.
“This study, I have to say, is exceedingly
impressive. The body of work that they put into this was really quite profound.
… I would call it groundbreaking,” said Sherri “Sam” Mason, director of
sustainability at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pennsylvania, who was not
involved in the study.
The finding reinforces long-held expert advice to
drink filtered tap water from glass or stainless steel containers to reduce exposure,
Mason said. That advice extends to other foods
and drinks packaged in plastic as well, she added.
“People don’t think of plastics as shedding but they do,” she said. “In almost the same way we’re constantly shedding skin cells,
plastics are constantly shedding little bits
that break off, such as when you open that plastic container for your
store-bought salad or a cheese that’s wrapped in plastic.”
How many nanoplastics are there?
Mason was the coauthor of a 2018 study that first detected the existence of micro-
and nanoplastics in 93% of samples of bottled water sold by 11 different brands
in nine countries.
In that past study, Mason found each
tainted liter of water held an average of 10 plastic particles wider than a
human hair, along with 300 smaller particles. Five years ago, however, there
was no way to analyze those tiny flecks or discover if there were more.
“It’s not that we didn’t know
nanoplastics existed. We just couldn’t analyze them,” Mason explained.
In the recent study, published
in January 2024 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, researchers from Columbia University presented a new technology that
can see, count and analyze the chemical structure of nanoparticles in bottled
water.
Instead of 300 per liter, the team
behind the latest study found the actual number of plastic bits in three
popular brands of water sold in the United States to be in between 110,000 and
370,000, if not higher. (The authors declined to mention which brands of
bottled water they studied.)
However, the new technology was actually able to see
millions of nanoparticles in the water, which could be “inorganic
nanoparticles, organic particles and some other plastic particles not
among the seven major plastic types we studied,” said coauthor and
environmental chemist Beizhan Yan, an associate research professor at
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The innovative new techniques
presented in the study open the door for further research to better understand
the potential risks to human health, said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies, Bright Futures,
an alliance of nonprofits, scientists and donors committed to reducing babies’
exposures to neurotoxic chemicals, who was not involved in the study.
“They suggest widespread human
exposures to minuscule plastic particles posing largely unstudied risks,”
Houlihan said in an email. “Infants
and young children may face the greatest risks, as their developing
brains and bodies are often more vulnerable to impacts from toxic exposures.”
Nanoplastics are the most worrisome
type of plastic pollution for human health, experts say. That’s because the
minuscule particles can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs,
potentially interrupting cellular processes and depositing endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenols, phthalates, flame
retardants, per-
and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS, and heavy
metals.
“All of those chemicals are used in the manufacturing of plastic, so
if a plastic makes its way into
us, it’s carrying those chemicals with it. And because the temperature of the
body is higher than the outside, those chemicals are going to migrate out of
that plastic and end up in our body,” Mason said.
“The chemicals can be carried to your liver
and your kidney and your brain and even make their way across the placental
boundary and end up in an unborn child,” Mason said.
In studies of pregnant mice, researchers have
found plastic chemicals in the brain, heart, liver, kidney and lungs of the
developing baby 24 hours after the pregnant mother ingested or breathed in
plastic particles, said study coauthor Phoebe Stapleton, associate professor of
pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of
Pharmacy in Piscataway, New Jersey.
“Micro and nanoplastics have been found in the
human placenta at this point, Stapleton said. “They’ve been found in human lung
tissues. They’ve been found in human feces; they’ve been found in human blood.”
In addition to the chemicals and toxic metals
plastics may carry, another relatively unstudied area is whether the plastic
polymer itself is also harming the body.
“The new frontier in plastics is understanding
the polymers — the plastic part of plastic,” Mason said. “We’ve been very
limited in our ability to understand the potential impact of the polymers on
human health because we have not been able to detect down to that level. Now,
with this new approach, we will be able to start doing so.”
CNN reached out to the International Bottled
Water Association, which represents the industry, for a response to the study’s
findings.
“This new method needs to be fully reviewed by
the scientific community and more research needs to be done to develop
standardized methods for measuring and quantifying nanoplastics in our
environment,” a spokesperson for the association told CNN via email.
“There currently is both a lack of
standardized methods and no scientific consensus on the potential health
impacts of nano- and microplastic particles. Therefore, media reports
about these particles in drinking water do nothing more than unnecessarily
scare consumers.”
Which plastics are you swallowing?
The study’s new method of identifying
nanoparticles in bottled water relies on a modified version of Raman
spectroscopy, a laser-based technique that can analyze the chemical composition
of cells by measuring how molecules vibrate in response to light.
The altered version, called stimulated
Raman scattering microscopy, or SRS, adds a second laser to “amplify the
previous signal by several orders of magnitude, allowing the previously unseen
nanoparticle to be detected,” said senior author Wei Min, a professor of
chemistry at Columbia University in New York City, who coinvented SRS
in 2008.
“This study is the first one to apply
this microscopy to the nanoplastic world,” Min said.
By dramatically boosting the image,
SRS can clearly identify and capture images of nanoparticles in microseconds rather than the hours needed by the
older technique — and do so without harming the tissues being imaged.
“But seeing the particles is not good
enough because how do you know this is plastic or not? To do that we developed
a new machine-based learning technology that allows us to identify and classify
which plastic it is,” Yan said.
At the time of publication, the
study’s algorithm was able to identify seven types of plastics: polyamide,
polypropylene, polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinyl chloride,
polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate.
“Based on other studies we expected
most of the microplastics in bottled water would come from leakage of the
plastic bottle itself, which is typically made of PET (polyethylene
terephthalate) plastic,” said lead author Naixin Qian, a doctoral student in
chemistry at Columbia University.
“However, we found there’s actually
many diverse types of plastics in a bottle of water, and that different plastic
types have different size distributions,” she said. “The PET particles were
larger, while others were down to 200 nanometers, which is much, much smaller.”
Studies have found that particles of
PET plastics can be broken off by repeatedly opening and closing the cap of the bottle, crushing the bottle or
subjecting it to heat, such as in a car.
Much more research to be done
Now that nanoplastics can be
identified and classified, it’s possible to research the answer to all sorts of
questions. For example, if the nanoplastics floating in the bottled water
weren’t from the bottle itself, where did they come from? The Columbia team is
investigating a hypothesis that the other nanoplastics may come from source
water, perhaps tainted by some part of the manufacturing process.
Another important
question: Which has fewer nanoplastics and chemical residues, bottled or tap
water?
“Several studies have reported lower
microplastic levels in tap water. Hence, it’s plausible to expect lower
nanoplastic levels in tap water as well, considering their common
sources,” Yan said.
“We’re conducting research on that right now.”
What happens once the plastic polymer and the
endocrine-disrupting chemicals enter the body’s cells? Do the invaders remain,
wreaking havoc by disrupting or damaging cellular processes, or does the body
succeed in kicking them out?
“We know these microparticles are getting into
the body, and we know even greater percentages of the smaller nanoparticles are
getting into cells, but we don’t know exactly where they’re going in the cell
or what they are doing,” Stapleton said. “And we don’t know if or how they’re
getting back out again.”
However, the new technology is well-suited to
analyzing human tissue samples and should soon provide some answers, Min said.
“If you look at our raw data, it’s actually a
series of images,” Min said. “In fact, we have plenty of data to show if a
particle has entered a particular location in a certain type of cell, then we
will be able to locate it precisely in space.”
While science explores these and other
questions, there are things people can do to reduce their exposure to plastics,
said Healthy Babies, Bright Futures’ Houlihan.
“We can avoid consuming foods and beverages in
plastic containers. We can wear clothing made from natural fabrics and buy
consumer products made from natural materials,” Houlihan said. “We can simply
take stock of the plastic in our daily lives and find alternatives whenever
feasible.”
Enjoy looking through my Library
Terry’s “Good Living” Guide:
Avoid the 3 PsBsSs
Processed Foods, Phthalates, Plastics;
Beef, Butter, Breads;
you’ll be feeling better in no time!
Avoid the 3 F’s
misinformation, fear, anger and hate!
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