Recently, a study from McGill University in Canada showed that tea bags release tens of billions of plastic particles at high temperatures. It is estimated that each cup of tea brewed from each tea bag contains 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles. The study was published in the American Journal of Environmental Science and Technology on September 25.
They randomly selected four plastic tea bags: two nylon bags and two PET bags. In particular, PET can be used in the temperature range of 55-60 ℃ for a long time, and can withstand high temperature of 65 ℃ and low temperature of - 70 ℃ for a short time, and has little impact on its mechanical properties at high and low temperatures. Throw away the tea, wash the bag with purified water, and then simulate the process of tea brewing, and soak the empty bag with 95 ℃ hot water for 5 minutes. It is obvious that the water we brew tea is boiling water, and the temperature is far higher than the use range of PET.
McGill's realization shows that a large number of plastic particles will be released first. A cup of tea bag can release about 11.6 billion microns and 3.1 billion nanometers of plastic particles! Moreover, whether these released plastic particles are toxic to organisms. In order to understand the biological toxicity, the researchers used water fleas, an invertebrate, which is a model organism used to evaluate the toxins in the environment. The higher the concentration of tea bag, the less active the water flea swimming. Of course, heavy metal+plastic is worse than pure plastic particles. At last, the water flea did not die, but it was deformed. The study concluded that whether the tea bag plastic particles affect human health needs further research.
Post time: Feb-14-2023