Bottled water: WHO launches plastic health review

[lurch234]

Bottled water: WHO launches plastic health review

 

The World Health Organization is to launch a review into the potential risks of plastic in drinking water.

 

It will assess the latest research into the spread and impact of so-called microplastics - particles that are small enough to be ingested.

 

It comes after journalism organisation Orb Media found plastic particles in many major brands of bottled water.

 

There is no evidence that microplastics can undermine human health but the WHO wants to assess the state of knowledge.

   

Plastic particles found in bottled water

 

Bruce Gordon, coordinator of the WHO’s global work on water and sanitation, told BBC News that the key question was whether a lifetime of eating or drinking particles of plastic could have an effect.

"When we think about the composition of the plastic, whether there might be toxins in it, to what extent they might carry harmful constituents, what actually the particles might do in the body – there's just not the research there to tell us.

"We normally have a 'safe' limit but to have a safe limit, to define that, we need to understand if these things are dangerous, and if they occur in water at concentrations that are dangerous."

 

Mr Gordon said that he did not want to alarm anyone, and also emphasised that a far greater waterborne threat comes in countries where supplies can be contaminated with sewage.

 

But he said he recognised that people hearing about the presence of microplastics in their drinking water would turn to the WHO for advice.

"The public are obviously going to be concerned about whether this is going to make them sick in the short term and the long term."

 

The WHO initiative is partly in response to a study that screened more than 250 bottles of water from 11 different brands bought in nine countries - the largest investigation of its kind.

 

A dye is used that binds to pieces of plastic

 

The tests were carried out at the State University of New York in Fredonia as part of a project involving original research and reporting by the US-based journalism organisation Orb Media.

 

Using a dye called Nile Red, which binds to free floating pieces of plastic, the university's Prof Sherri Mason found an average of 10 plastic particles per litre of water, each larger than the size of a human hair.

 

Smaller particles assumed to be plastic but not positively identified were found as well - an average of 314 per litre.

 

After filtration, the larger particles - yellow marks - are easy to see

 

Of all the bottles tested, 17 were found to have no particles at all while many had counts ranging into the hundreds or even thousands, with big differences within brands and even the same pack of bottles.

 

We contacted the companies behind the brands and most responded, standing by the quality and safety of their products.

 

A few questioned why the study’s results were so much higher than their own internal research or pointed out that there are no regulations on microplastics or agreed methods for testing for them.

 

The study comes on top of earlier investigations that have found microplastics in tap water, beer, sea salt and fish, and Prof Mason told me that researchers need to be able to answer the pressing question of whether microplastics can be harmful.

 

"What we do know is that some of these particles are big enough that, once ingested, they are probably excreted but along the way they can release chemicals that cause known human health impacts.

 

"Some of these particles are so incredibly small that they can actually make their way across the gastro-intestinal tract, across the lining and be carried throughout the body, and we don’t know the implications of what that means on our various organs and tissues."

 

 

The UK's Food Standards Agency said it was unlikely that the levels of microplastic reported in the bottles of water could cause harm but it added that, "it would assess any emerging information concerning microplastics in food and drink".

 

For Dr Stephanie Wright of the King’s College Centre for Environment and Health, the priority is to understand how much microplastic we are exposed to, and exactly what happens to it inside us.

 

Researchers have established that tiny particles of titanium dioxide can pass through the lining of the gut so the same might be possible with plastic, raising the question of where it would then end up.

 

Dr Wright told me: "The particles could stay within an immune cell in the gut lining, or be passed into our lymphatic system ending up in the lymph nodes, or there is a small potential for them to enter the blood stream and possibly accumulate in the liver.

 

"These are foreign hard particles which our body will obviously want to get rid of but it can’t because plastic is not degradable so that will cause harm to the local tissue.

 

"But at the moment we don't know."

 

I suggested to Michael Walker, a consultant to the Office of the UK Government Chemist and founder board member of the Food Standards Agency, that the jury was out on whether microplastics could cause harm.

 

He replied: "The scientific literature says that not only is the jury not yet out on this question but the jury has not yet been convened on it."

 

Source

[mona]

@lurch234

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a global enviromental disaster (only 50% plastic bottles collected for recycling - given the wide scale of popularity and use !).

And it bothers me much more than just microscopic plastic particles in bottled water.   

 

 

[Radpop]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43388870

 

Tests on major brands of bottled water have found that nearly all of them contained tiny particles of plastic.

 

In the largest investigation of its kind, 250 bottles bought in nine different countries were examined.

 

Research led by journalism organisation Orb Media discovered an average of 10 plastic particles per litre, each larger than the width of a human hair.

 

 

[sixoclock]

Whoever can come up with a "magic pill" that will aggregate these polymeric particles in our body so that they will come out of our body as poop will be rich

[rasbridge]

You’re Probably Drinking Microplastics With Your Bottled Water

 

Alexandra Ossola
Published: 19 hours ago

 

Bottled water has surprisingly high levels of microplastics, according to a new study. That might endanger human health. 

You already know how bad plastic bottles are for the planet. We go through a million of them per minute and are generally terrible at recycling. As a result, bottles join other plastic waste in clogging up waterways, harming wildlife and accumulating in delicate ecosystems.

Now we know this plastic use is probably not too good for us, either. In fact, taking a sip of bottled water might come with more than you bargained for.

The water sold in plastic bottles contains microplastics at levels that might endanger human health, according to a recent study. As a result, the World Health Organization plans to investigate the potential health risks of ingesting plastic, the BBC reports.

 

Microplastics are pieces of plastic that have broken down a size smaller than a fingernail. About 275,000 metric tons of the stuff enter our waterways each year, according to some estimates.

In the study, which has not been published in a scientific journal and was commissioned by journalistic outlet Orb Media, researchers at State University of New York at Fredonia tested water from 259 bottles produced by 11 different companies and purchased in nine countries. They dropped a red dye into the bottles because the dye sticks to the plastics, differentiating them from the water in which they float. The scientists counted an average of 10.4 plastic particles per liter. Some bottles had no plastic in them at all. In a liter of Nestle Pure Life, there were 10,000.

The findings suggest that a person who drinks a liter of bottled water a day — half of what the average person needs every day — might be consuming tens of thousands of microplastic particles each year, the Orb Media article notes.

We don’t yet know how microplastics affect our health, but there’s reason to think that their buildup in our systems wouldn’t be good for us. We already know that when microplastics build up in animals like fish, they affect their behavior and alter their hormones. Some chemicals in plastic are known to have similar effects on humans.

 

If you’re shocked that there’s plastic in your water, well, you haven’t been paying attention. A previous investigation by Orb Media found that 83 percent of tap water samples contained microplastics. The shocking thing about this study? The amount of microplastic found in plastic bottles was double what scientists found in tap water.

It’s difficult to imagine a solution that would take care of the problem completely. Municipalities and companies could better filter water before it flows into taps and plastic bottles. But even if we did that, we would still have discarded plastic bottles breaking down into microplastics in water everywhere — not to mention lots of other plastic products. Better filtration would just be a temporary solution to a much larger problem. People, along with the ecosystems in which they live and the animals that live there with them, would probably be better off if governments banned plastics altogether.

 

Source:  https://futurism.com/microplastics-bottled-water/

 

[Radpop]

Different header, same news.

[rasbridge]

Why Microplastics are Dangerous

Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. Microplastics also include those tiny beads of manufactured polyethylene plastic, generally less than five millimetres in length, that have found their way into the manufacture of various products such as cosmetics, health and beauty products, washing powders, toothpastes and clothing.

According to recent research by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, massive amounts of microplastics are emitted from industry, normal households, and in surface run-off in urban areas, on a daily basis, and can also accumulate in sewage sludge used as a fertiliser for agriculture and horticulture.

The study outlines the fact that there may be far higher levels of microplastics in the soil than in our oceans as a result, and that they are also entering waste water treatment plants.

While sewage sludge is treated to remove various regulated hazardous substances, microplastics are not currently on the regulatory agenda.

NIVA researcher Luca Nizzetto said:

“We have found figures from the Nordic countries suggesting that a large fraction of all the microplastics generated in Western societies tend to end up in the sludge in wastewater treatment plants. Our estimates suggest that between 110.000 and 730.000 tons of microplastics are transferred every year to agricultural soils in Europe and North America, comprehensively. This level of microplastics exceeds the estimated total burden of microplastics currently present in ocean water.”

While we have been aware of the ingress of microbeads and other microplastics in the oceans for a while now, it is a concern that chemical-based microplastics are not only entering the human food chain via marine life, which we already knew, but also possibly via food grown for human consumption. This could impact negatively on human growth, reproduction and survival.

The bottom line is that microplastics are getting into our food chain and into our drinking water, and this is very dangerous.

 

Source:  https://www.living-water.co.uk/blog/why-microplastics-are-dangerous/

[sixoclock]

Wait for another study that claim microplastics help removing toxins from our body.

[flash48]

Perhaps the group who funded this study are the glass-makers.

[anakin206]

What about bottled sodas?

[flash48]

7 minutes ago, anakin206 said:

What about bottled sodas?

Yes you have a point, bottled sodas will be worse  The acid in the soda will enhance the break down of the plastic.

[jiski]

Living very dangerous.  Result in death.  

[Mystique]

I'd prefer drinks to be packaged in glass but each to their own. There are places in some countries in which they drink from plastic bags so I wonder how bad that is.

[DKT27]

@rasbridge: Topics merged.

 

On 3/16/2018 at 9:09 PM, Radpop said:

Different header, same news.

 

 

Please do report such things whenever required, if not already done so.

 

ANW, saw it in news. Concerning I think.