United States: Researchers have found in a new study that bottled water sold in stores contains up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously thought.
According to the study, an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven different types of plastic were found in one liter of water, which is equal to two standard-sized bottled waters. Of these, 90 percent were identified as nanoplastics and the remaining portion as microplastics.
Nanoplastics are so small that they can pass through the tissues of the lungs or digestive tract and enter the bloodstream, dispersing potentially hazardous synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells. They are 1,000th the width of an average human hair, according to experts.
Polymer fragments, known as microplastics, can have sizes ranging from less than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer). Anything smaller needs to be expressed in billionths of a meter because it is a nanoplastic.
After testing three well-known US bottled water brands (the brands were not disclosed), the researchers discovered that each liter contained anywhere from 110,000 to 370,000 particles, with 90 percent of the plastics being nanoplastics and the remaining 10 percent being microplastics.
The most frequently found plastic was polyamide (PA), a kind of nylon. Seven of the most common plastics were found in the bottles, including polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used to make water bottles, and polystyrene (PS), which is used to make Styrofoam containers.
Only 10 percent of the nanoplastics detected in the water were these seven plastics; the remaining 90 percent may contain tens of millions of particles per liter, depending on the kind of nanoplastic that is discovered.
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