There Is Plastic In Your Drinking Water

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Designer water, sold in plastic bottles, also has plastic that people ingest. A FIJI Natural Artesian Water case with 24 16.9 fl. oz. bottles costs $21.98. The microscopic plastic particles in it are free.

More consumer danger: Lead paint.

In a research paper titled “Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy,” the authors report, . “As a demonstration, micro-nano plastics in bottled water are analyzed with multidimensional profiling of individual plastic particles. Quantification suggests more than 105 particles in each liter of bottled water, most of which are nanoplastia.”

Translated, this means over 200,000 of the smallest measurable plastic particles are in each liter of bottled water. These particles pass through the digestive system into human blood. George Leonard, co-author of the Environmental Pollution paper and chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy, commented, “There is zero chance that exposure to plastics is good for you. What is the magnitude of the risk, and how do you minimize that?”

The problem will worsen, and neither regulation nor better water filtration systems can entirely solve it, no matter how large the investment is. The plastics humans suggest don’t come from drinking water but come from beef and fish.

Among the major reasons for the plastic problem is a lack of incentive to drive recycling, whether the government is concerned about health or money. The OECD reports that only 9% of plastics are recycled every year. As for the value of current incentives, the authors wrote: “Bans and taxes on single-use plastics exist in more than 120 countries but are not doing enough to reduce overall pollution.”

The plastics problem is another example of how little is done by humans to protect themselves from the harm they have created for themselves by their actions.