Your soothing cup of tea may contain billions of microplastic
“The study authors acknowledge that the amount of plastics in a single cup of tea—around 16 micrograms—is not likely to pose any acute toxicity risks, but questions linger about the impacts of long-term exposure. “Overall, the knowledge on adverse effects of plastic particles on human health is still lacking,” the researchers write, “and there is an urgent need to investigate potential toxic mechanisms in higher vertebrates and humans.”
I’d think that this was something they have been working on for years, apparently not.
This article made me gag a little! I’ve used some bags with that “silk-like” feel that they talk about in the article – never again! I try to always buy tea loose leaf, but even then, you never know where the teas are coming from. Even tea shops that sell “organic” teas have teas like japanese matcha or chinese pu-reh and it makes me wonder how we can be really sure if these products are a) actually from their place of origin and b) if they are natural.
On the brighter side, there is a lovely tea shop in Salinas called Golden Leaf (https://goldleafspiceandteas.com/) that has natural (I hope) teas that you can buy in bulk. I’ll never buy pre-packaged again now that I know about this store!
Thanks for sharing Deniz. I also saw a related article in the news the other day, which is even more concerning for me. We don’t have any control over the amount of plastic we consume because micro-plastics are in basically everything we consume 🙁
Here is the URL because I am not sure how to link something in a comment:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/12/plastic-youre-eating-credit-cards-worth-plastic-each-week/1437150001/
I’ve seen this! And it makes me so mad. So mad. I can rant about the environment forever.
It’s so ridiculous that corporations look for ways to feed us more plastic! On the flip-side, I don’t understand how bagged tea became the default. The regular flat bags of tea are filled with the leftover dust of producing real tea. Why do we buy it? Why are corporations spending more money to wrap these dust particles in plastic, and probably putting those teabags in individually wrapped (non recyclable, non reusable) bags, putting those into a box, and then plastic wrapping the box?! It’s all insanity. What’s wrong with selling tea leaves?
We can buy coffee in paper bags. We brew our own coffee in the morning. You can make tea in a coffee press the same way you can make coffee. There’s no need to grind any beans! It just … does not make sense.
There’s this new meme that I’ve seen where a fish monger is handing a fish over to a customer. She asks for a plastic bag and he says that it’s already in the fish.
This is the world we now live in and it should be truly upsetting to everyone.
I was able to find good info from your content.
I remember a similar moment while playing Connections Game with friends; we realized how many foods we eat daily might contain contaminants we never consider. Over time, concerns like these grow more significant as more research comes to light.