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Bloomberg

A typical one-litre bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average, according to a new study.
Many of those fragments have historically gone undetected, the researchers determined, suggesting that health concerns linked to plastic pollution may be dramatically underestimated.
The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to evaluate bottled water for the presence of “nanoplastics” – plastic particles under 1 micrometre in length, or one-seventieth the width of a human hair.
The findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated, as earlier studies only accounted for microplastics, or pieces between 1 and 5,000 micrometers.

Nanoplastics pose a greater threat to human health than microplastics because they’re small enough to penetrate human cells, enter the bloodstream and impact organs.
Nanoplastics can also pass through the placenta to the bodies of unborn babies. Scientists have long suspected their presence in bottled water, but lacked the technology to identify individual nanoparticles.
Drinking microplastics is probably fine, World Health Organization says
To overcome that challenge, the study’s co-authors invented a new microscopy technique, programmed a data-driven algorithm and used both to analyse roughly 25 1-litre bottles of water purchased from three popular brands in the US. (The researchers declined to specify which brands.)
They found 110,000 to 370,000 tiny plastic particles in each litre, 90 per cent of them nanoplastics.
“This study provides a powerful tool to address the challenges in analysing nanoplastics, which holds the promise to bridge the current knowledge gap on plastic pollution at the nano level,” said Naixin Qian, the study’s lead author and a graduate student of Columbia University in chemistry.
“Previously this was just a dark area, uncharted. Toxicity studies were just guessing what’s in there,” adds Beizhan Yan, the study’s co-author and an environmental chemist at Columbia University. “This opens a window where we can look into a world that was not exposed to us before.”
The researchers targeted seven common plastic types, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which many water bottles are made from, and polyamide, often used in filters to purify water before it’s bottled.
But they also discovered many unidentified nanoparticles in the water. If any of those are also nanoplastics, the prevalence of plastic in bottled water could be even higher.

The world produces more than 450 million tonnes of plastics each year, much of which eventually ends up in landfills. The vast majority of plastic does not degrade naturally, but breaks down into smaller pieces over time.
Tiny plastic bits are also routinely shed from plastic-containing products while they’re in use, including many synthetic fabrics.
While plastic pollution exists everywhere on Earth, bottled water is of particular interest to scientists because of its potential to introduce plastic particles to the human body.
Meet the Chinese fish robots that ‘eat’ microplastics
A study published in 2022 found that the concentration of microplastics in bottled water was higher than in tap water. A report from 2021 warned that simply opening and closing the cap on a plastic bottle of water can release tiny plastic bits into the liquid.
The co-authors of the latest study say their research won’t stop at bottled water. They also plan to investigate nanoplastics in tap water and snow samples collected from western Antarctica.
“There is a huge world of nanoplastics to be studied,” said Wei Min, another co-author and a biophysicist at Columbia University. “The smaller things are, the more easily they can get inside us.”
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse


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Science

Bottled water contains more plastic particles than previously thought

Bottled water is up to a hundred times worse than previously thought when it comes to the number of tiny plastic bits it contains. Photo: Shutterstock

Naixin Qian, the study’s lead author. Photo: AP

Tonnes of waste, including plastic bottles, in Visegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The world produces more than 450 million tonnes of plastics each year. Photo: Reuters

US woman who says she drank ‘semen-contaminated’ water at California hotel sues Ritz-Carlton

The pair, referred to in the lawsuit as John and Jane Doe, checked into the California hotel for a four-night stay last fall. Photo: Shutterstock

India, the world’s largest plastics polluter begins single-use ban on cups, straws, and spoons – but not water bottles

India banned some single-use or disposable plastic products on Friday as part of a federal plan to phase out the ubiquitous material in the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people. Photo: EPA-EFE

A recycling revolution beckons using plastic-eating bacteria found in trash decades ago

Plastic-eating bacteria found in Japan in 2001 have proved the catalyst for scientific research that aims to scale up their diet so they reduce Earth’s plastic waste problem. Photo: Getty Images

Plastic-eating bacteria found in Japan in 2001 has since proved the catalyst for scientific research that aims to scale up the tiny critters’ diets and potentially mitigate Earth’s plastic waste problem. Photo: Getty Images

Plastic-eating bacteria found in Japan in 2001 have proved the catalyst for scientific research that aims to scale up their diets and reduce Earth’s plastic waste problem. Photo: Getty Images

Kohei Oda, who led the group of Japanese scientists that discovered bacteria chewing through plastic in 2001. Photo: Kyoto Institute of Technology

Stacks of plastic bottles at a recycling plant in London. Photo: Getty Images

Colourised slides of Ideonella sakaiensis (left) and the degraded remains of plastic (right). Enzymes produced by the bacteria reduce PET to its constituent chemicals. Photograph: Kyoto Institute of Technology

A woman gathers shells in a coastal forest littered with plastic waste stuck in branches after it was washed up by rising coastal tide, in Vietnam. Photo: AFP

Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) was the British microbiologist who discovered penicillin in 1928. Photo: Getty Images

A worker arranges processed plastic chips made of recycled plastic bottles at a plastic recycling facility. Photo: AFP

While recycling may slow down new plastic production, it won’t help us claw back the plastic that already pollutes our oceans. Photo: Getty Images

News

World

United States & Canada

Researchers found hundreds of thousands of plastic particles in one-litre bottles of water sold in the US
Findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated


A typical one-litre bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average, according to a new study.


Environment

The human body

Antarctica

Bottled water contains more plastic particles than previously thought

Researchers found hundreds of thousands of plastic particles in one-litre bottles of water sold in the US Findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated

Researchers found hundreds of thousands of plastic particles in one-litre bottles of water sold in the US

Findings show that bottled water could contain up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously estimated