Microplastics in Bottled Water At Least 10 Times Worse Than Once Thought

TIME

Bottled water has long been marketed as a safer alternative to what comes out of the tap—if it doesn’t come straight from a mountain spring, it’s at least purified and chemical free. But a new study by scientists at Columbia University and Rutgers University demonstrates that bottled water may be far worse when it comes to microscopic plastic pollutants capable of passing into the bloodstream.

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00:10 So these are lenses, these are mirrors.

00:19 >> [INAUDIBLE]

00:21 >> Will be sent through the mirror.

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00:28 So our research found that there are on average a quarter of a million

00:34 particles including both microplastics and

00:39 nanoplastics per liter of the bottled water.

00:44 If the plastic particles breaks up, it does not stop at micron size.

00:48 It can actually go even smaller.

00:50 So once the size goes below one micron, people call it nanoplastics.

00:56 Cuz now it's size is in the nano range.

01:00 There are actually other techniques people commonly use to study nanoparticles.

01:06 It's called electron microscopy.

01:08 They can actually see very tiny particles in nanometer size.

01:14 But they don't tell you if the particle is plastic or not.

01:22 So our techniques combines the both benefits.

01:27 Being able to see smaller and

01:30 then being able to tell what type of plastic chemical composition is that.

01:35 I mean, whether we see it or not, it's out there.

01:39 So it's better that we actually know how much is out there and what they are.

01:43 But I myself as a scientist,

01:47 I would want more data in terms of the toxicology study.

01:52 To actually know how harmful it would be to my own body.

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