Plastic has contaminated every aspect of our life now. Even though our recent campaigns are aimed to control the use of single use plastics, we have to accept that plastic will have a major impact on the earth and its population, for years to come. As I write this piece, I’m forced to sip tea from a cup with two tea bags in it. Polypropylene, which is used to seal and secure the teabags, is a harmful plastic that goes into our bodies in millions of microscopic pieces, making us unhealthier.
The tea bag study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, is just the latest example of how plastic tends to break off in tiny bits. And how does that affects our health? Well, that’s still not clear, although some early indications are cause for concern.
For the study, McGill researchers looked at four types of commercial teas packaged in plastic tea bags. To avoid any interference with the readings, they removed the tea from the bags and steeped the plastic bags in 95 degree Celsius water.
Mc Gill University researchers reported, “We show that steeping a single plastic teabag at brewing temperature releases approximately 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into a single cup of the beverage.”
The benefits of drinking tea no doubt are solid yet we simply don’t know whether and how drinking this amount of tiny plastics will impact us. Further research is When it comes to human health, we’re in uncharted territory here.
Approximately 60.2 billion cups of tea are consumed in Britain alone each year, making them the most susceptible population to this plastic ingestion epidemic. Even though we have several hundred campaigns present, we need to find a solution to this teabag crisis as well.
