Bottles of plastic water contains 240,000 pieces of cancer-causing nanoplastics, new report says
Bottles of plastic water contain hundreds of thousands of toxic microscopic plastic particles, new research has found.
Drinking water from a bottle could mean you are contaminating your body with tiny bits of plastic, which scientists fear can accumulate in your vital organs with unknown health implications. Nanoplastics have already been linked to cancer, fertility problems, and birth defects.
Scientists using the most advanced laser scanning techniques found an average of 240,000 plastic particles in a one-liter bottle of water, compared to 5.5 per one liter of tap water.
University of Columbia researchers tested three popular brands of bottled water sold in the United States and, using lasers, analyzed the plastic particles they contained down to just 100 nanometers in size.
These microscopic particles carry phthalate chemicals that make plastics more durable, flexible, and lasting longer.
Phthalate exposure is attributed to 100,000 premature deaths in the US each year. The chemicals are known to interfere with hormone production in the body.
They are ‘linked with developmental, reproductive, brain, immune, and other problems’, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The highest estimates found 370,000 particles.
Nanoplastics had been too difficult to detect using conventional techniques, which could only find microplastics ranging from 5mm down to 1 micrometer – a millionth of a meter, or 1/25,000th of an inch.
Groundbreaking research in 2018 found around 300 microplastic particles in a liter of bottled water, but researchers were limited by their measurement techniques at the time.
