I’m surprised to see them characterize the cellulose from a paper teabag as releasing “microplastics.” I get that cellulose is a polymer, but do practitioners not distinguish between naturally-occurring polymers and synthetic plastics in this kind of microplastic/nanoplastic research?
When I boil some vegetables, do they leach microplastics into the cooking liquid, or is that something different from what this study is describing?
(Edit: on looking to the study itself, it seems like this was more about developing a methodology than asserting anything in particular about the paper teabag, which they described as a random pick stripped from some green teabags from the store.
Specifically I didn’t understand it to suggest that synthetic microplastics had gotten bound up in the paper matrix somehow and THAT was what was being released… so maybe it was, after all, just “model intestines absorb cellulose but not super well.”
Maybe practitioners would understand the cellulose results to be used like a control here?
>do practitioners not distinguish between naturally-occurring polymers and synthetic plastics in this kind of microplastic/nanoplastic research?
They don't care. This is a junk paper that cites a bunch of other junk papers. It's published in the same junk journal that gave us the junk paper on black plastic kitchen utensils. I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit, but what you're looking at has nothing to do with science.
>I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit
Not even the part about how you know it's junk? Is that based on your own critical analysis of the content, or just on what Retraction Watch has to say about Chemosphere?
Thankfully they break down the results per material, so you can care about the other materials and ignore the cellulose results if you like. So, yes, the different types of material are distinguished from one another.
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.
That’s also the materials from each type of tea bag, not a list of materials found in a single bag:
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
You have a mistaken understanding of paper teabags. They are made of paper, but during manufacturing the paper bag is sprayed with plastic to finish it
(And no, I’m not talking about the silky plastic pyramid style ones. Just the cheap paper ones)
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
To me, that suggests there were bags included containing no PP or Nylon-6.
> Most paper tea bags also have plastic fibers
used in the sealant in addition to these nylon and PET plastic tea
bags. Even paper tea bags have an unsettling substance called
epichlorohydrin added to them in order to keep them from
bursting.
this is such garbage paper you are referencing, and in particular the claim "most paper tea bags contain unsettling amounts of bad plastics" screams for citations and testing method.
I guess the authors only took into consideration some bad quality local trash brand.
Yorkshire Tea claims "most of the bag is made from natural fibres like wood pulp and the seal is made with PLA - an industrially compostable, plant-based plastic"
> In environments above 60°C, such as in hot liquids or high-heat exposure, PLA can begin to leach additives or degrade into its lactic acid monomers
Why the fuck are these sodding tic tacs putting 3D printer plastic into tea bags that will be thrown into boiling water?!
I suspect this is something like Tazo that has the little pyramids make of a nylon type material vs the basic Lipton type tea bag that's just a paper product.
According to the comment just above you, that’s not the case, it’s talking about plain paper bags that are then treated. They link to an NIH page as their source.
I'm not a chemist, but skimming the paper it certainly sounds like the cellulose itself is what they are measuring:
> Following, ATR-FTIR analysis was performed in the teabags as well as in the leached mixture of nanoparticles plus fibers (Fig. 3). Both teabags and the leachate suspension matched their polymer composition being two of them petroleum-based polymers like nylon-6 (NY6, sample 1) and polypropylene (PP, sample 2), the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer.
I didn't see any mention of plastic binders or other material in the cellulose sample, just references to cellulose.
On the other hand, it was curious that they purchased the synthetic bags empty, but cellulose bags filled with tea, when it is pretty easy to find empty paper tea bags, so maybe there is something particular about the specific type of cellulose tea bag they chose?
Oh my. I hadn’t thought about the adhesives. And just at a gander at the study’s figures, their various microplastic signals from the cellulose bag are hard to distinguish from the pure nylon and polypropylene ones. That’s a sobering thought…
"To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition."
The different teabag composition materials were from separate types of teabags, not composition materials of the same teabag.
There is some confusion about the materials used in teabags. Depending on the brand, they may be pure cellulose, or they may be made with plastics and PFAs.
It sounded from the methods section like a random paper teabag from the store. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the manufacturing world had moved from paper to some kind of engineered cellulose bioplastic… but I always thought of those more in the context of rayon, and those horrible “bamboo” textiles and foams. (Versus linen made from bamboo fibers, which is lovely :)
Are there other processes that work out cheaper than paper for teabag kind of applications these days?
Anyway, it comes across like they're trying to warn about nylon or polypropylene being unexpectedly found in disposable tea bags that appear to be made of paper; but in the details you read that the microplastics are "derived from several types of commercially available tea bags" - a category which certainly includes bags very openly and obviously made of nylon (reusable, pyramid-shaped ones). There are tons of places reporting on this new study, but the idea doesn't seem to be new at all. (It also seems like common sense to me that immersing a fine plastic mesh in your food, and allowing it to reach close to 100 degrees Celsius, might be a risk for this sort of thing.) It wasn't new in 2019, either: see e.g. https://ratetea.com/topic/nylon-tea-bags/30/ .
But then, a bit of searching suggests that the disposable paper bags may indeed contain a significant amount of plastic (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ , although the tone of the writing here seems rather fear-mongering). The reporting would be much better if it made this sort of thing clear.
I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? How does that compare with microplastics entering our food and drink from the plastic-lined paper cups we drink hot tea and coffee out of, from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in, from the bottled water that sits inside plastic for months, from all of the plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens, from the disposable serrated plastic knife we might use at an event to cut our chicken, and so forth? Why tea bags?
Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else? Surely if you brew tea in a wooden container, "microwood" particles are entering the drink. Surely when you scrape your stainless steel spatula against your stainless steel skillet making scrambled eggs, "microsteel" particles are embedded in your eggs. How does the body deal with micro-everything? Is there any reason to think plastic is more harmful? Is there any specific supposed health consequence, like a specific type of cancer or increased aging or something?
"Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food. "Microsteel" is just elemental iron which is a necessary nutrient.
Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don't exist in nature. They're similar to cellulose but no organisms exist that eat them. They're believed to be nonreactive and therefore harmless but they might bioaccumulate which could be bad, or they might react with things in our bodies in unknown circumstances. We have limited experience with these molecules so it is hard to say.
Missing from this answer is the early evidence that they may be _very_ harmful. Early evidence suggests they are not non-reactive. They disrupt many of the body's systems in ways we're only beginning to understand.
> Various examples of damage caused by microplastics have been reported, such as microplastic accumulation in the bodies of marine and aquatic organisms (leading to malnutrition), inflammation, reduced fertility, and mortality. The threats that microplastics present to the human body have not yet been clearly identified. However, previous reports have shown that ultrafine microplastic absorption resulted in complex toxicity in zebrafish,2 and that microplastics under 100 nm in size can reach almost all organs after entering the human body.3 Therefore, concerns exist regarding the negative effects of continuous microplastic accumulation in the human body.
> Microplastics have been found in a variety of organisms and multiple parts of the human body. We emphasize the potential impact of microplastics on the early exposure of infants and the early development of embryos. At present, the toxicity research on microplastics show that the exposure will cause intestinal injury, liver infection, flora imbalance, lipid accumulation, and then lead to metabolic disorder. In addition, the microplastic exposure increases the expression of inflammatory factors, inhibits the activity of acetylcholinesterase, reduces the quality of germ cells, and affects embryo development. At last, we speculate that the exposure of microplastics may be related to the formation of various chronic diseases.
The reason for "why microplastics?" is because human use of everyday objects are more plastic than wood or steel. The reason for "why teabags?" is because of previous studies and because I think tea makes it to the top five of the most ingested liquid list.
I seem to recall a recent study of microplastic levels in a general population, where people with higher microplastic levels seemed to be tea drinkers, which took some by surprise at the time. I think the population under study was from latin america, if I'm not mistaken. Since this study now has flooded the search results, I'm having trouble finding that specific study.
Be that as it may, it's likely that there is a focus on tea because tea-drinkers scored high on microplastics in previous studies.
> "Microwood" is basically just cellulose, aka insoluble fiber, which naturally exists in our food.
This is one thing that confused me about the first article I saw on this. The paper lists three things it detected, one being cellulose, and various articles will list them all together as if they're just three microplastics to be worried about.
The paper seems to encourage this reading with this line: "the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer"[0].
Was sample 3 completely fine? If so, why is say "Nanoplastics were obtained from three teabag brands during a standard preparation"? Are they classing cellulose as nanoplastics?
Can the body break down cellulose though? It can't digest it at least. And do reactions that could use naturally occurring iron compounds work with steel alloys designed to be non-reactive?
I think something else that doesn't get mentioned is it's not just the risk of microplastics reacting, the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically. So nonreactive shouldn't be taken to imply harmless.
> How does that compare with ... plastic-lined paper cups .. cling wrap that covers our food as we heat ... the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in ... bottled water that sits inside plastic for months ... plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens ... disposable serrated plastic knife...
For myself, I don't do any of the above (with the possible exception of the last one once in a while). I thought everyone knew those were a bad idea.
I do drink tea using tea bags though — and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved.
This discussion is complicated by the loose (ha!) definition of tea bags. There’s about a million different tea bags. Some use denser paper, some are thin. Some are stapled, some are pressed. Some are stringed and some are not. Some are single-use cotton (which I learned about when a local tea brand stopped using them due to cost).
Lipton makes a premium brand that uses a tetrahedral shaped micro-perforated plastic bag that very much could be shedding microplastics.
It’s hard to have a discussion without a clear definition and terminology.
Most teabags I use now don't split (some imported brands you have to be careful with), these are just regular looking ones not the fine mesh ones used by premium brands. I can jam them against the side of the cup to squeeze out liquid before removing the bag and they almost never split.
I'd say these extra strong bags have become common in the last 15 years in the UK. How they are strengthened I'm not sure, but my parents compost most of their food waste and they reckon worms now push teabags to the top of the compost bin, when previously they would just disappear with everything else and never be seen again.
There was a different study earlier this year on hacker news about the storage items - cling wrap and plastic containers, those materials all leach into food at different rates depending upon the temperature, acidity of food, and length of exposure contact - hotter and more acidic and longer means more leaching. It's non-zero but the danger level is anyone's guess at this point.
Just FYI, you can buy stainless steel loose leaf tea infusers. They don't cost a lot ($6->$15) and loose leaf tea is shockingly cheap. Just get a nice airtight container and some moister absorbing packets and you'll have great tea for a while.
I bought like 1lbs ~2 years ago for about $20 and still haven't worked all the way through it :D.
Do you never consume canned goods? Cans for soda are lined with a plastic. Same for vegetables.
Never mind the clothes that you wear. Or the dishwasher that cleans the dishes.
Plastics have grown to be basically everywhere. Precautions are good. Same for studies. And we may find alternatives. But a lot of the fear around them does feel excessive.
I've no idea why they chose teabags to study - one has to start somewhere, presumably - but I can answer the second question. The distinctive feature of plastics is the synthetic polymers that they contain, which classically feature bonds between oxygen atoms. These are extremely difficult for any organic process to break apart. Wood, however, can even be digested in small quantities, so 'microwood' will just break down into its constituent parts in the human body. The body can cope with metals and indeed has evolved to require a small amount, for instance in hemoglobin.
We aren't fully aware of the implications of microplastics on health, but the main cause for concern is that we have no easy way of getting them out (either naturally or medically) in the event that they are harmful.
I think they are a pretty reasonable thing to study. Teabags are porous plastic subjected to high heat. So the question has to be "what happens when these plastic baggies get exposed to high levels of heat? Does that liberate some of the plastic into the drink?"
Particularly worthy because tea is one of the most common beverages consumed.
We do know that microplastics may be reducing male fertility. I know there are others but I haven't done a ton of research [1]. Wood and stainless steel are different because we have evolved with these materials in our surroundings or at least something close to them. Also, wood, and even metals, do not have the staying power of plastic. We already do know that heavy metals are bad if they stick around in your body, but we do need metals in our diets as nutrients as well.
It should be assumed that anything that we have invented in the last 200 years should be guilty until proven innocent at this point imo. So many of the "modern marvels" have shown to have horrible health effects.
The dangers of sawdust (micro wood?) vary from species of tree to tree, but are generally well known and studied. in particular Manchineel and Yew are known to be dangerous.
Wood in its natural state is not a safe substance. African Mahogany for example is highly toxic, causing dermatitis, respiratory issues, giddiness, vomiting, boils, asthma, headaches, and nosebleeds. Has also been linked to nasal cancer.
If you microwave your consumables in plastic that is on you. Microwavable plastic is a marketing myth. Put your food on a plate or bowl and cover it with a wet paper towel.
It is absolutely not on you. In order to function as an adult you need to be able to have some level of trust in your family, your society, and your government (depending on where you live, I guess). That doesn't mean blindly believing everything you hear, but it does mean not having to do novel scientific research to confirm everything you were ever taught.
The majority of people alive on Earth today grew up in a world where plastic packaging and containers were a common, completely accepted part of life. Research suggesting this is harmful is very new, and still not settled. You cannot blame anyone for not picking this random ubiquitous aspect of modern life and avoiding it because it might be bad for them. Home microwaves themselves are no older than home plastics - why do you trust them?
We have a set of reusable silicone lids. They can withstand high temperature on stove or microwave and just rinse off. Hopefully they aren't found to release anything.
Instead of a paper towel, we throw food on a plate or bowl and drop a lid on it. This also works in the fridge; one less thing to wash and nothing disposed.
But is it? How confident are you that this is your greatest exposure? Odds are there is something else in your life at least 100x as bad. And what does it mean that cellulose, a naturally occurring compound, releases 15x more microplastics than nylon? Or does iy? This study didn’t measure nanoplastics.
That’s what a lack of context does. No harm in just avoiding anything any study has found to be potentially harmful (especially tea bags, which are a crime against good tea and easily replaced). But… it’s impossible to know if this is the equivalent of stopping smoking, or of brushing teeth three times a day instead of two.
You never have food or drink that was stored or served via plastic containers? How? I ask seriously - how do you live your life to entirely avoid this, while also not living a life so separate from society that you are drinking tea made from tea bags?
Lose leaf tea is much better anyway. You can get multiple infusions out of it which is nice if you don't need the caffeine the second time around (it's quite water soluble and mostly all goes in the first infusion).
A second infusion with bags always just ends up kinda watery and sad. Something about the leaves being smaller...
In the study, they put 300 nylon/plastic bags into 1L of near-boiling water. Many bags are paper derivatives and not plastic. No need to completely stop enjoying tea.
It is well established that heating plastic in a culinary context distributes significantly more microplastic into your food.
Microplastics are also well established endocrine disrupters.
Microplastics cross the blood brain barrier and may also permanently stay in your body.
To what extent are these harmful? In what dose, over how much time? I don’t think that’s established. You could be cautionary, or wait for more science about how long it takes to reduce your fertility. It may also be inescapable, plastic is likely a permanent earth pollutant now, in your clothes, dust in the air, food, water, and most things in your home, including ones you abrasives use inside your body, like toothbrushes. Maybe only very high doses (like drinking tea from teabags once a day) have a detrimental health effect. Many compounds are lethal in high doses, and healthy, benign, or required for survival in low doses.
I absolutely agree that meaningful context would be helpful, but I don't see that as disqualifying. I appreciate that research is opportunistic, as often oriented toward discovery of new things not yet understood, as much about building up our factual understanding as interpretation.
So sure, I want context, but I think this kind of exasperation is a bit misplaced, as I don't think the article or the research itself was intended to be a comprehensive account of the broader contexts you are looking for. If it was masquerading as such a thing, I would be in full agreement. So I think it's a fair point in general, but the way you are saying it here sounds an awful lot like you're holding up a stop sign and saying "don't do any more research!"
I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container.
Also once you put your mind to it it's actually pretty easy to avoid most of the things you mentioned. There are glass or metal alternatives to pretty much everything plastic. Maybe not for creating an airtight seal over something like leftovers, but I think it's reasonable to expect that the food can sit in glass and have a plastic roof and still be relatively free of microplastics.
More research is needed it seems pretty plausible that plastics, like asbestos, are only a hazard when friable.
> I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a bag made of a fine mesh of plastic to yield more tiny broken off pieces than something like plastic container.
Is it? The mesh bag goes through basically zero abrasion at less than 100°C. It just sits there in the mostly still water.
Meanwhile, the plastic container might be in contact with fatty food way over 100°C. It gets scraped by pointy utensils. It gets abraded by a cleaning pad. It gets scratched and cloudy. It gets used hundreds of times.
I'd be guessing the plastic container sheds orders of magnitude more microplastics.
> ”from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in”
You shouldn’t really be doing either of those things. Plastic tupperware will get damaged from heat if you use it in the microwave frequently, potentially contaminating your food.
It’s best to transfer food to a heat-safe container (glass or ceramic) before microwaving. And definitely don’t use cling film in the microwave!
>First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
>Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
Not sure I understand your criticism. I think choosing tea bags and microplastics in particular is a way to 'ground' a study and experiments into something practical, rather than something too broad, abstract, and/or un-relatable to consumers.
I eat processed, ready-to-eat stuff at home, heavily use microwave for heating, but I don't do/use any of the things you mentioned. I generally prefer loose leaf tea, but sometimes tea bags are easier, so I only buy brands that use natural tea bags. It's possible to reduce exposure to pollutants if you're willing to sacrifice some convenience.
If one had to study the entirety of a subject it would be impossible to do so in many cases. It is entirely reasonable for a researcher to pick one piece of the puzzle and study that. No it does not give the entire picture but it may help us understand the greater picture.
Lastly if this was anywhere else besides HN there is a microwood entering you joke to be made.
> First of all, what’s with the focus on tea bags?
Well, lucky for you, there's an entire scientific study detailing why they chose to study it and the methodologies they used. You know, the one linked in the article. It states:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans.
And this is just a snippet! Much more detail and context available within! The wonders of original sources.
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
The cited Banaei et al., 2023[1] says "At this point, special attention should be paid to the release of MNPLs from the herbal/teabags, since during the soaking and steering processes, some MNPLs inevitably detach and migrate to the water solution", citing [2]...which is retracted with this explanation: "2 of the reviews for this manuscript were fictitious. 2 reviews were submitted under the name of known scientists without their knowledge."
So, yeah. Sometimes it's interesting to follow citation chains a few steps.
Agreed. While some people are nit picking the comment here as “well don’t do any of those things,” it still doesn’t quantify the danger.
Recently read from “Made to Stick”: “Don’t just say popcorn has 40g of trans fats. Everyone knows trans fats are bad, but how bad is bad? Say popcorn has more trans fats in one serving than a whole day of greasy junk food”
I mean, why not? I get your point but before wide encompassing studies and meta studies, a lot of things will be looked at because we can look at them. It's like asking why investigate dolphin language instead of all animal communication.
These are all questions that are pretty easy to answer these days; perfectly appropriate for asking to an LLM or search engine.
Long story shot - yes, this is a major problem. Yes, you're getting it from bottled water and plastic utensils and plastic lined cups. No, it's not like microwood.
This shit is being found in every organ of our bodies from our sex organs to our brains. It's found in most wild animal samples, it's found in rain, it's found on Everest's peak and in the Mariana Trench. And every indication is that it's getting rapidly worse, scaling up with our ever-increasing plastic production.
And there are perfectly good alternatives for the vast majority of this use, but the costs are a bit higher (since they're not being externalized onto the planet and our organs as much).
From the study linked in the article: "Overall, our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence on the pervasive nature of plastic pollution and its potential implications for human health. As the usage of plastics in food packaging continues to rise, scientific research and policymaking must address the challenges posed by MNPL contamination to ensure food safety and consumer well-being."
> I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
So? Your inability to find meaningful context in something is not important. Who are you and why should this article or study cater to you? Are you in the business of doing research on this topic? Or are you just an HN commenter?
Your ignorance is not a sign of anything other than you being ignorant, and your inability to do something is just that: lack of skill.
> First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
Because you can't just assume. You test. That's science. Just assuming (your suggestion) is anti-science. And something we should NOT base our science off of.
> Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
That's not what this study is trying to determine. It set out to determine how much microplastics came from tea bags. Why increase the scope. Other people are studying that.
You really don't seem like someone who understands how this works. You don't put the puzzle together all at once, you put it together one piece at a time.
I find it quite ironic how many people on HN have a superiority complex to sites like Reddit, yet suffer the same pitfalls. Not reading the source material and going off of headlines or snippets.
Asking for “context” and “why did they study this” is quite interesting, considering the scientific study whose entire purpose is to introduce this context is directly linked within the article.
Exactly. This is a study about the exposure and absorption parts of the equation. The science is ongoing. People who can't deal with anything less than total certainty don't understand the process.
Talking tea bags, this is a rabbit hole as a few sibling commenters pointed out already:
- most tea bags contain plastic themselves
- pretty much every bakery / small coffee place place serves tea in paper cups lined up with plastic, it's very difficult to get a tea in a proper ceramic cup those days
- waters heaters often have plastic lids
- pretty much every insulated thermos also has at least a plastic cover
I think for most places in the world, tea is an activity done at home with own cups/glasses.
Or at least, say in China/Taiwan, the heated tea gets made cold in steel containers and then served cold in plastic cups (e.g. For milk tea) else all is ceramic.
The main point is that even who doesn't go to buy a tea elsewhere get in contact with microplastic. So, now many people might have to switch to loose leaf to avoid getting another source of microplastics in their daily lives.
Loose leaves are more inconvenient compared to tea bags. All else equal dont expect major adoption just for yet another health scare. People in general are lazy.
other big overlooked area — paper cups are covered inside with hydrophobic film that is made of plastic, and given extra hot water makes plasticisers get off substance, chances are all those paper cups are releasing lots of microplastics into hot water. ask for mugs folks.
Growing up, paper cups were all coated in wax, but I can't remember the last time I'd seen one coated in wax in the US, it's been at least a decade. Back then I remember being cautioned against using paper cups for hot drinks as it would melt the parafin (which wasn't great to drink) and then the paper would get soggy. Hot drinks to go were mostly served in styrofoam back then, while they are mostly plastic coated paper now. So that was probably a small step forward, although reusable ceramic or metal is better than either.
Your own comment is also not science. Scientific results (particular testing conditions and results) need to be interpreted and actions decided on in the real world. Policy is not science either.
> Several studies in the past have shown that harmful chemicals and substances can leach from paper and paperboard-based food packaging into the food meant for human consumption (Choi et al., 2002, Hansen et al., 2013, Schaider et al., 2017, Trier et al., 2011, Trier et al., 2018, Deshwal et al., 2019, Vandermarken et al., 2019).
> "BPA, phthalates, plasticisers etc. are not chemically bound to substance they added too, and under heat they come out [...] you don't want to mix these with your food, but the worst thing to do is to put it in the heated environment" — Dr. Shanna Swan, Ph.D
Just make sure the mugs weren't washed with Jet Dry...
Avoiding toxic and questionable substances really does get exhausting after awhile. It's everywhere. I'm able to draw a reasonable line (for me) without getting too nuts about it. Hoping AI ends up helping with this.
what would AI do that human intelligence couldn't? Is it not a linear cause-and-effect relationship? more plastics cause more illness? (yes | no). If plastics are toxic, wouldn't we see for ourselves (thus NOT requiring AI) a proportionate increase in sickness in samples (people or animals) with higher plastic in their bodies? Why is the message more profound if AI tells you versus a human team of college researchers?
To all those who are asking "Why teabags?", it's in the introduction section of the study.
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
If you home-compost you get used to finding tea bag skeletons in the compost. For years I used to rip open the used tea bag, compost the tea and discard the bag.
In the last few years the largest two brands here (Ireland: Lyons and Barrys) have gone somewhere between "plastic free" and "biodegradable" (but not home-compostable). 95% of tea is sold in the form of tea bags here.
https://livinglightlyinireland.com/2021/02/12/plastic-free-t...
(article is from 2021, I think the title is suffering from a Wordpress date placholder)
I throw the whole teabag, rope and all, into the compost and the mealworms make it into incomprehensible brown slush along with the rest of the pile in a few days. It’s always way more productive using insects in the compost.
Readit News
When I boil some vegetables, do they leach microplastics into the cooking liquid, or is that something different from what this study is describing?
(Edit: on looking to the study itself, it seems like this was more about developing a methodology than asserting anything in particular about the paper teabag, which they described as a random pick stripped from some green teabags from the store.
Specifically I didn’t understand it to suggest that synthetic microplastics had gotten bound up in the paper matrix somehow and THAT was what was being released… so maybe it was, after all, just “model intestines absorb cellulose but not super well.”
Maybe practitioners would understand the cellulose results to be used like a control here?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352... )
They don't care. This is a junk paper that cites a bunch of other junk papers. It's published in the same junk journal that gave us the junk paper on black plastic kitchen utensils. I can't really say more without risking a defamation suit, but what you're looking at has nothing to do with science.
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/journal-that-publishe...
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/13/publisher-slaps-60-pa...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42494733 ("Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index (arstechnica.com)", 63 comments)
You get nice news headlines with no tangible issues to health are found and it's easy to just prove a bunch of microplastics in all the things.
If I wanted an easy PhD I'd likely do the same due to how shitty academic hustle is in today's world...
Not even the part about how you know it's junk? Is that based on your own critical analysis of the content, or just on what Retraction Watch has to say about Chemosphere?
Dead Comment
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
You have a mistaken understanding of paper teabags. They are made of paper, but during manufacturing the paper bag is sprayed with plastic to finish it
(And no, I’m not talking about the silky plastic pyramid style ones. Just the cheap paper ones)
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/
> To such end, three teabags of different chemical compositions were used in this study: (1) empty nylon-6 (NY6) teabags (as a model of polyamide), (2) empty polypropylene (PP) teabags, and (3) commercially available teabags containing tea, and cellulose as the polymer composition.
To me, that suggests there were bags included containing no PP or Nylon-6.
this is such garbage paper you are referencing, and in particular the claim "most paper tea bags contain unsettling amounts of bad plastics" screams for citations and testing method.
I guess the authors only took into consideration some bad quality local trash brand.
> In environments above 60°C, such as in hot liquids or high-heat exposure, PLA can begin to leach additives or degrade into its lactic acid monomers
Why the fuck are these sodding tic tacs putting 3D printer plastic into tea bags that will be thrown into boiling water?!
https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/our-packaging
I don't think they called cellulose microplastic anywhere. The issue is that commercial teabags these days often aren't using pure paper teabags:
> The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose
I believe the polymers are usually coming from the glue keeping the bag together. This is a known issue going back years [0].
0 - https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
> Following, ATR-FTIR analysis was performed in the teabags as well as in the leached mixture of nanoparticles plus fibers (Fig. 3). Both teabags and the leachate suspension matched their polymer composition being two of them petroleum-based polymers like nylon-6 (NY6, sample 1) and polypropylene (PP, sample 2), the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer.
I didn't see any mention of plastic binders or other material in the cellulose sample, just references to cellulose.
On the other hand, it was curious that they purchased the synthetic bags empty, but cellulose bags filled with tea, when it is pretty easy to find empty paper tea bags, so maybe there is something particular about the specific type of cellulose tea bag they chose?
The different teabag composition materials were from separate types of teabags, not composition materials of the same teabag.
https://www.implasticfree.com/why-you-should-switch-to-plast...
Are there other processes that work out cheaper than paper for teabag kind of applications these days?
Anyway, it comes across like they're trying to warn about nylon or polypropylene being unexpectedly found in disposable tea bags that appear to be made of paper; but in the details you read that the microplastics are "derived from several types of commercially available tea bags" - a category which certainly includes bags very openly and obviously made of nylon (reusable, pyramid-shaped ones). There are tons of places reporting on this new study, but the idea doesn't seem to be new at all. (It also seems like common sense to me that immersing a fine plastic mesh in your food, and allowing it to reach close to 100 degrees Celsius, might be a risk for this sort of thing.) It wasn't new in 2019, either: see e.g. https://ratetea.com/topic/nylon-tea-bags/30/ .
But then, a bit of searching suggests that the disposable paper bags may indeed contain a significant amount of plastic (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ , although the tone of the writing here seems rather fear-mongering). The reporting would be much better if it made this sort of thing clear.
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First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags? How does that compare with microplastics entering our food and drink from the plastic-lined paper cups we drink hot tea and coffee out of, from the cling wrap that covers our food as we heat it in the microwave, from the Tupperware and other plastic containers we heat our food up in, from the bottled water that sits inside plastic for months, from all of the plastic bowls and utensils we use in our kitchens, from the disposable serrated plastic knife we might use at an event to cut our chicken, and so forth? Why tea bags?
Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else? Surely if you brew tea in a wooden container, "microwood" particles are entering the drink. Surely when you scrape your stainless steel spatula against your stainless steel skillet making scrambled eggs, "microsteel" particles are embedded in your eggs. How does the body deal with micro-everything? Is there any reason to think plastic is more harmful? Is there any specific supposed health consequence, like a specific type of cancer or increased aging or something?
Microplastics are novel hydrocarbons that don't exist in nature. They're similar to cellulose but no organisms exist that eat them. They're believed to be nonreactive and therefore harmless but they might bioaccumulate which could be bad, or they might react with things in our bodies in unknown circumstances. We have limited experience with these molecules so it is hard to say.
> Various examples of damage caused by microplastics have been reported, such as microplastic accumulation in the bodies of marine and aquatic organisms (leading to malnutrition), inflammation, reduced fertility, and mortality. The threats that microplastics present to the human body have not yet been clearly identified. However, previous reports have shown that ultrafine microplastic absorption resulted in complex toxicity in zebrafish,2 and that microplastics under 100 nm in size can reach almost all organs after entering the human body.3 Therefore, concerns exist regarding the negative effects of continuous microplastic accumulation in the human body.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10151227/
> Microplastics have been found in a variety of organisms and multiple parts of the human body. We emphasize the potential impact of microplastics on the early exposure of infants and the early development of embryos. At present, the toxicity research on microplastics show that the exposure will cause intestinal injury, liver infection, flora imbalance, lipid accumulation, and then lead to metabolic disorder. In addition, the microplastic exposure increases the expression of inflammatory factors, inhibits the activity of acetylcholinesterase, reduces the quality of germ cells, and affects embryo development. At last, we speculate that the exposure of microplastics may be related to the formation of various chronic diseases.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/envhealth.3c00052
I seem to recall a recent study of microplastic levels in a general population, where people with higher microplastic levels seemed to be tea drinkers, which took some by surprise at the time. I think the population under study was from latin america, if I'm not mistaken. Since this study now has flooded the search results, I'm having trouble finding that specific study.
Be that as it may, it's likely that there is a focus on tea because tea-drinkers scored high on microplastics in previous studies.
This is one thing that confused me about the first article I saw on this. The paper lists three things it detected, one being cellulose, and various articles will list them all together as if they're just three microplastics to be worried about.
The paper seems to encourage this reading with this line: "the third one (from the supermarket) being cellulose (CL, sample 3), a bio-based polymer"[0].
Was sample 3 completely fine? If so, why is say "Nanoplastics were obtained from three teabag brands during a standard preparation"? Are they classing cellulose as nanoplastics?
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...
I think something else that doesn't get mentioned is it's not just the risk of microplastics reacting, the physical non-reactive presence of particles can clog and get in the way of natural processes mechanically. So nonreactive shouldn't be taken to imply harmless.
They are short-chain hydrocarbons, which most definitely exist in nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep
Steel also contains carbon and if it is stainless steel it also has chromium and probably other metals.
For myself, I don't do any of the above (with the possible exception of the last one once in a while). I thought everyone knew those were a bad idea.
I do drink tea using tea bags though — and had no reason to believe there was plastic involved.
Lipton makes a premium brand that uses a tetrahedral shaped micro-perforated plastic bag that very much could be shedding microplastics.
It’s hard to have a discussion without a clear definition and terminology.
I'd say these extra strong bags have become common in the last 15 years in the UK. How they are strengthened I'm not sure, but my parents compost most of their food waste and they reckon worms now push teabags to the top of the compost bin, when previously they would just disappear with everything else and never be seen again.
I bought like 1lbs ~2 years ago for about $20 and still haven't worked all the way through it :D.
Never mind the clothes that you wear. Or the dishwasher that cleans the dishes.
Plastics have grown to be basically everywhere. Precautions are good. Same for studies. And we may find alternatives. But a lot of the fear around them does feel excessive.
We aren't fully aware of the implications of microplastics on health, but the main cause for concern is that we have no easy way of getting them out (either naturally or medically) in the event that they are harmful.
I think they are a pretty reasonable thing to study. Teabags are porous plastic subjected to high heat. So the question has to be "what happens when these plastic baggies get exposed to high levels of heat? Does that liberate some of the plastic into the drink?"
Particularly worthy because tea is one of the most common beverages consumed.
It should be assumed that anything that we have invented in the last 200 years should be guilty until proven innocent at this point imo. So many of the "modern marvels" have shown to have horrible health effects.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/
Wood in its natural state is not a safe substance. African Mahogany for example is highly toxic, causing dermatitis, respiratory issues, giddiness, vomiting, boils, asthma, headaches, and nosebleeds. Has also been linked to nasal cancer.
https://www.mountainwoodworker.com/articles/toxic_woods.pdf
If we "know" something, would we still be using the word "may"? Know seems pretty strong for such a wishywashy result of "may".
There's definitely research in fertility rates lowering. Phtalates are receiving a lot of attention as well as an example.
The majority of people alive on Earth today grew up in a world where plastic packaging and containers were a common, completely accepted part of life. Research suggesting this is harmful is very new, and still not settled. You cannot blame anyone for not picking this random ubiquitous aspect of modern life and avoiding it because it might be bad for them. Home microwaves themselves are no older than home plastics - why do you trust them?
Instead of a paper towel, we throw food on a plate or bowl and drop a lid on it. This also works in the fridge; one less thing to wash and nothing disposed.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21939283/
That’s what a lack of context does. No harm in just avoiding anything any study has found to be potentially harmful (especially tea bags, which are a crime against good tea and easily replaced). But… it’s impossible to know if this is the equivalent of stopping smoking, or of brushing teeth three times a day instead of two.
A second infusion with bags always just ends up kinda watery and sad. Something about the leaves being smaller...
Microplastics are also well established endocrine disrupters.
Microplastics cross the blood brain barrier and may also permanently stay in your body.
To what extent are these harmful? In what dose, over how much time? I don’t think that’s established. You could be cautionary, or wait for more science about how long it takes to reduce your fertility. It may also be inescapable, plastic is likely a permanent earth pollutant now, in your clothes, dust in the air, food, water, and most things in your home, including ones you abrasives use inside your body, like toothbrushes. Maybe only very high doses (like drinking tea from teabags once a day) have a detrimental health effect. Many compounds are lethal in high doses, and healthy, benign, or required for survival in low doses.
So sure, I want context, but I think this kind of exasperation is a bit misplaced, as I don't think the article or the research itself was intended to be a comprehensive account of the broader contexts you are looking for. If it was masquerading as such a thing, I would be in full agreement. So I think it's a fair point in general, but the way you are saying it here sounds an awful lot like you're holding up a stop sign and saying "don't do any more research!"
Also once you put your mind to it it's actually pretty easy to avoid most of the things you mentioned. There are glass or metal alternatives to pretty much everything plastic. Maybe not for creating an airtight seal over something like leftovers, but I think it's reasonable to expect that the food can sit in glass and have a plastic roof and still be relatively free of microplastics.
More research is needed it seems pretty plausible that plastics, like asbestos, are only a hazard when friable.
Is it? The mesh bag goes through basically zero abrasion at less than 100°C. It just sits there in the mostly still water.
Meanwhile, the plastic container might be in contact with fatty food way over 100°C. It gets scraped by pointy utensils. It gets abraded by a cleaning pad. It gets scratched and cloudy. It gets used hundreds of times.
I'd be guessing the plastic container sheds orders of magnitude more microplastics.
You shouldn’t really be doing either of those things. Plastic tupperware will get damaged from heat if you use it in the microwave frequently, potentially contaminating your food.
It’s best to transfer food to a heat-safe container (glass or ceramic) before microwaving. And definitely don’t use cling film in the microwave!
Not sure I understand your criticism. I think choosing tea bags and microplastics in particular is a way to 'ground' a study and experiments into something practical, rather than something too broad, abstract, and/or un-relatable to consumers.
Lastly if this was anywhere else besides HN there is a microwood entering you joke to be made.
Well, lucky for you, there's an entire scientific study detailing why they chose to study it and the methodologies they used. You know, the one linked in the article. It states:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans.
And this is just a snippet! Much more detail and context available within! The wonders of original sources.
According to the paper[0]:
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
The cited Banaei et al., 2023[1] says "At this point, special attention should be paid to the release of MNPLs from the herbal/teabags, since during the soaking and steering processes, some MNPLs inevitably detach and migrate to the water solution", citing [2]...which is retracted with this explanation: "2 of the reviews for this manuscript were fictitious. 2 reviews were submitted under the name of known scientists without their knowledge."
So, yeah. Sometimes it's interesting to follow citation chains a few steps.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
The context is a comparison between good old paper tea bags.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21939283/
Why?
Recently read from “Made to Stick”: “Don’t just say popcorn has 40g of trans fats. Everyone knows trans fats are bad, but how bad is bad? Say popcorn has more trans fats in one serving than a whole day of greasy junk food”
Long story shot - yes, this is a major problem. Yes, you're getting it from bottled water and plastic utensils and plastic lined cups. No, it's not like microwood.
This shit is being found in every organ of our bodies from our sex organs to our brains. It's found in most wild animal samples, it's found in rain, it's found on Everest's peak and in the Mariana Trench. And every indication is that it's getting rapidly worse, scaling up with our ever-increasing plastic production.
And there are perfectly good alternatives for the vast majority of this use, but the costs are a bit higher (since they're not being externalized onto the planet and our organs as much).
Dead Comment
> I find it impossible to put this into any kind of meaningful context.
So? Your inability to find meaningful context in something is not important. Who are you and why should this article or study cater to you? Are you in the business of doing research on this topic? Or are you just an HN commenter?
Your ignorance is not a sign of anything other than you being ignorant, and your inability to do something is just that: lack of skill.
> First of all, what's with the focus on tea bags?
Because you can't just assume. You test. That's science. Just assuming (your suggestion) is anti-science. And something we should NOT base our science off of.
> Second, how do "microplastics" compare to micro-everything else?
That's not what this study is trying to determine. It set out to determine how much microplastics came from tea bags. Why increase the scope. Other people are studying that.
You really don't seem like someone who understands how this works. You don't put the puzzle together all at once, you put it together one piece at a time.
Asking for “context” and “why did they study this” is quite interesting, considering the scientific study whose entire purpose is to introduce this context is directly linked within the article.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
- most tea bags contain plastic themselves
- pretty much every bakery / small coffee place place serves tea in paper cups lined up with plastic, it's very difficult to get a tea in a proper ceramic cup those days
- waters heaters often have plastic lids
- pretty much every insulated thermos also has at least a plastic cover
For the last one, a friend has recently found some plastic-free thermos: https://www.kleankanteen.com/collections/plastic-free
Please share if you know others.
Or at least, say in China/Taiwan, the heated tea gets made cold in steel containers and then served cold in plastic cups (e.g. For milk tea) else all is ceramic.
The main point is that even who doesn't go to buy a tea elsewhere get in contact with microplastic. So, now many people might have to switch to loose leaf to avoid getting another source of microplastics in their daily lives.
Doesn't this study show that cellulose releases microplastics as well? I assume tea leaves have cellulose in them, so best to avoid tea altogether.
> Several studies in the past have shown that harmful chemicals and substances can leach from paper and paperboard-based food packaging into the food meant for human consumption (Choi et al., 2002, Hansen et al., 2013, Schaider et al., 2017, Trier et al., 2011, Trier et al., 2018, Deshwal et al., 2019, Vandermarken et al., 2019).
https://youtu.be/i5611OvTFGM?feature=shared&t=5289
> "BPA, phthalates, plasticisers etc. are not chemically bound to substance they added too, and under heat they come out [...] you don't want to mix these with your food, but the worst thing to do is to put it in the heated environment" — Dr. Shanna Swan, Ph.D
Avoiding toxic and questionable substances really does get exhausting after awhile. It's everywhere. I'm able to draw a reasonable line (for me) without getting too nuts about it. Hoping AI ends up helping with this.
> Among the different food containers releasing MNPLs, teabags stand out. Recent investigations have elucidated that teabags significantly contribute to the release of millions of MNPLs, adding to their daily ingestion by humans (Banaei et al., 2023).
I don't use tea bags, all my tea is loose leaf, but I'm sure it's still got micro plastics somewhere in it
In the last few years the largest two brands here (Ireland: Lyons and Barrys) have gone somewhere between "plastic free" and "biodegradable" (but not home-compostable). 95% of tea is sold in the form of tea bags here. https://livinglightlyinireland.com/2021/02/12/plastic-free-t... (article is from 2021, I think the title is suffering from a Wordpress date placholder)