Drinking water in plastic bottles contains countless particles too small to see. New research finds that people who drink water from them on a daily basis ingest far more microplastics than those who don’t.
Researchers, including those from the French food safety agency ANSES, found an average of around 100 microplastic particles per litre in glass bottles of soft drinks, lemonade, tea, and beer.
This could be five to 50 times greater than the rate found in plastic bottles or metal cans, scientists say.
I’m skeptical about that study. I did stop buying glass bottles after seeing this (I was also swayed by them being more expensive and smaller) but intuitively it doesn’t make sense to me that just particles from the bottle cap could cause more microplastics than the entire bottle made of plastic.
Acting like every plastic is the same makes as much sense as acting like every metal is the same…
But it seems it has more to do with the sealing process used.
Caps are painted/coated, then crimped around the outside of the bottle. It sounds like the crimper never gets cleaned, and since it’s not sealed till crimped, we get some of those tiny particles shot into the bottle from the force of it.
So to bring it all back, the plastic bottles are manufactured with plastic that is “food safe”. The coating on the caps is not. So very little leaches from a bottle, everything from the cap dust is just going to float around in there.
Most plastic caps are made from a colored resin. I used to buy them from the manufacturers. We coated the Tito’s caps with the copper color. The silver ones are metallized in a similar way.
The study could not directly establish whether there was any health risk from the consumption of such beverages sold in glass bottles or not, due to the lack of toxicological data.
The plastic particles turned out to be contamination matching the paint of the caps, so it is different types of plastic, and that could be either better or worse.
Seems like cans are the safest option.
Ironically glass may shed more micro plastics…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/microplastics-toxic-glass-bottles-anses-study-b2776731.html
I’m skeptical about that study. I did stop buying glass bottles after seeing this (I was also swayed by them being more expensive and smaller) but intuitively it doesn’t make sense to me that just particles from the bottle cap could cause more microplastics than the entire bottle made of plastic.
Acting like every plastic is the same makes as much sense as acting like every metal is the same…
But it seems it has more to do with the sealing process used.
Caps are painted/coated, then crimped around the outside of the bottle. It sounds like the crimper never gets cleaned, and since it’s not sealed till crimped, we get some of those tiny particles shot into the bottle from the force of it.
So to bring it all back, the plastic bottles are manufactured with plastic that is “food safe”. The coating on the caps is not. So very little leaches from a bottle, everything from the cap dust is just going to float around in there.
Most plastic caps are made from a colored resin. I used to buy them from the manufacturers. We coated the Tito’s caps with the copper color. The silver ones are metallized in a similar way.
From the article linked by u/givesomefucks:
The plastic particles turned out to be contamination matching the paint of the caps, so it is different types of plastic, and that could be either better or worse.
Seems like cans are the safest option.
Cans have a plastic lining. It’s just plastic with extra steps :)
From the article:
By normal formatting standards that means cans have the lowest average.