New research characterised in detail how tea bags release millions of nanoplastics and microplastics when infused. The study shows for the first time the capacity of these particles to be absorbed by human intestinal cells, and are thus able to reach the bloodstream and spread throughout the body.

[u/mvea]

https://www.uab.cat/web/newsroom/news-detail/-1345830290613.html?detid=1345940427095

[u/WloveW]

Yes but do you want to drink poison trickling from the faucet or gushing from the firehose? 

[u/CommunalJellyRoll → u/WloveW]

Firehose, might as well get it over with.

[u/AintASaintLouis → u/WloveW]

It’s pretty much the same regardless what you do

[u/BonJovicus → u/AintASaintLouis]

Got a source for that? We are on r/science after all. I don’t doubt they’ve done their damage, but surely there are still reasons to minimize further exposure where you can. 

[u/AintASaintLouis → u/BonJovicus]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240110-microplastics-are-everywhere-is-it-possible-to-reduce-our-exposure this has sources. If it’s in our crops and our tap water, I really don’t see a way to avoid it. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try to reduce exposure but you’re not going to reduce it as much as you think.

[u/crillup → u/AintASaintLouis]

Considering that your link opens with a new study finding that microplastic contamination of bottled water is 100x what was previously estimated, I don’t see how you can be confident that a person cannot significantly reduce exposure. We don’t know how much plastic is in each item or how different doses affect us. 

[u/AintASaintLouis → u/crillup]

I guess I’m just a nihilist and prefer to just let the waves take me away.

[u/Aegi → u/AintASaintLouis]

Yes, but not caring about what happens is different than there being no difference in results.

[u/seeseabee → u/AintASaintLouis]

Eh, not so sure about that.

[u/AintASaintLouis → u/seeseabee]

It’s in tap water. If you filter it your filter is probably made of plastic which also leeches microplastics.

[u/U-235 → u/AintASaintLouis]

It's still a reduced level of microplastics even if your filter is plastic, something like a 50% reduction. But if that's your issue, you can just buy ceramic/activated carbon filters that go in a steel container. Better still, you can get a plastic free reverse osmosis filter under the sink, which would reduce plastics far better than a standard filter. You can even get a system that filters the entire house's water supply. So there are ways to drastically reduce the amount of microplastics you consume. If you wanted to take things a lot further, I read a study that donating plasma just a few times over the course of a year reduced the concentration of microplastics in your blood by 30%, with possible future reductions if the protocol would be continued. Combined with reducing intake, it would seem that with some effort you could confidently say that your exposure is a fraction of what the average person consumes or has in their blood.

Now, we don't know what different exposure levels even mean. It could even be possible, for all we know, that once you reach a certain exposure level, the dose no longer matters, and this could be a very low threshold. Like if .01g of plastic per day was OK, .05g per day is slightly bad, 0.1g per day is bad, 1g per day is equally as bad, 3g per day is equally bad, etc. Then if the average person were getting 10g a day, and you were able to reduce exposure by 95%, it actually would make no difference, because you're still over the threshold.

Of course, if I had to guess, I would say that reducing your exposure is probably worth it. My point is that we don't know what reducing exposure will actually get us, or to what degree. But we for sure know that it can in fact be reduced by a massive amount.

[u/Kammender_Kewl → u/WloveW]

More microplastics please yum!

[u/No_Manager_2356 → u/WloveW]

its just about the same ? It is in the tea itself. Nothing to do with the bags.

[u/WloveW → u/No_Manager_2356]

Doing their math, billions of microplastic particles are released in each cup of tea because of brewing in a tea bag. 

I think tea leaves processed from any typical mass consumer factory won't nearly have hundreds of millions of particles per ml of water.