Ingested, inhaled, absorbed through the skin, nanoplastics invade our bodies.
Just as when we inject toxic water into the earth, we do not know yet the extent of the damage we sustain.
But the more we learn, the worse it gets.
More and more reasons to shun bottled water.
Read the original article here in Climate California.
Thanks to Bill Basta and Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson for this link.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Researchers Discover Thousands of Nanoplastic Bits in Bottles of Drinking Water
It seems anywhere scientists look for plastic, they find it: from the ice in Antarctica, to the first bowel movement produced by newborn babies.
Now, researchers are finding that the amount of microscopic plastics floating in bottled drinking water is far greater than initially believed.
Using sophisticated imaging technology, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty laboratory examined water samples from three popular brands (they won’t say which ones) and found hundreds of thousands of bits of plastic per liter of water.
Ninety percent of those plastics were small enough to qualify as nanoplastics: microscopic flecks so small that they can be absorbed into human cells and tissue, as well as cross the blood-brain barrier.
“For a long time before this study, I actually thought that what was inside bottled water [in terms of] nanoplastics was just a few hundred PET particles,” said Naixin Qian, a Columbia chemistry graduate student and the study’s lead author. “It turns out to be much more than that.” PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a type of clear plastic that is commonly used for single-use water bottles.
Microplastics — particles that range from 1 micrometer to 5 milimeters in size — have been documented in bottled and tap water for several years. But the identification of nanoplastics — particles that measure just billionths of a meter — is raising alarms.
The incredibly small size of nanoparticles allows them to behave differently than larger pieces of matter, said Beizhan Yan, a Columbia environmental chemist and a co-author of the study.
Pollutants and pathogens can be carried on the surface of a particle, and the smaller a particle gets, the larger its surface area-to-volume ratio becomes.
As a result, Yan said, “even if they’re not that toxic at a larger particle size, when they become smaller they become toxic, because they can interfere in the cells, in the tissues, inside of the organelles.”
But research on other animals suggests a strong, negative influence on health. In laboratory studies of fish and rodents, microplastics were shown to interfere with development, reproductive ability and health, gut health, hormone levels, immune responses, the heart and more.
During the past several years, researchers have identified microplastics from the deepest oceanic waters to the snowy tops of the planet’s highest mountains. They’ve found it in human blood, lung tissue and in the brain, and in organisms ranging from worms and zooplankton to whales and polar bears.
In some cases, the particles are ingested with food and water. In other cases, they are inhaled — scientists have found them in outdoor and indoor air, as well as in clouds — or absorbed through the skin.
“As people, we are in environments where plastic is everywhere,” Yan said.
There’s also evidence that these small particles bioaccumulate, or grow more concentrated as they move up the food chain from one organism to the next.
Though the Columbia study didn’t analyze samples of tap water, previous studies looking at microplastics have found much lower concentrations of those particles in tap water than in bottled water.
Food packaging is also a known source of plastic contamination in food. On Jan. 4, Consumer Reports released the results of its investigation into plastic chemicals in common processed foods widely available in the U.S.
Plastic chemicals and nanoplastics “are part of the same problem, but they’re two totally different animals,” said James E. Rogers, a microbiologist who is acting director of product safety at Consumer Reports. “One is a chemical and one is a physical piece, even if it is micro-sized.”
Both phthalates and bisphenols are known endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with the body’s hormonal systems. Exposure to these chemicals over time is associated with higher risks of diabetes, obesity, cancers and fertility problems, Rogers said.
“You may not be able to get to zero exposure, but at least you can reduce your risk by reducing your exposure,” Rogers said. “Cut out the fast food. Eat less processed foods. Eat less fatty food.”
Now that they’ve grossed us out about bottled water, the Columbia team are looking at how else they can use stimulated Raman scattering microscopy to seek out nanoplastics in other areas of life.
And a group at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, are using artificial intelligence to help sort through the plastic bits they find in wastewater — providing a novel, and potentially more powerful and accurate, way of identifying different and often difficult to identify varieties of plastic in water samples.
“It’s an example of using AI for good,” said Wayne Parker, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the school.
Methods like AI, or the technology used by the Columbia team to identify micro- and nanoplastics, will enable researchers to better identify “and assess the risks of these of these particles” in the environment and in ourselves, Parker said.