Well, that’s it: no more teabags for me.
I’m a tea drinker and vastly prefer loose tea over tea bags. The problem is that loose chamomile tea is hard to find in the stores, consequently I’ve been buying the bagged version for years. This story absolutely appalls me; I’m very upset that now I’ve got billions of microplastics in my system. Read it and weep.
snip:
Canadian researchers published a study in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Environmental Science and Technology which found that steeping a single plastic tea bag at brewing temperature releases about 11.6 billion minuscule particles known as “microplastics” and 3.1 billion “nanoplastics” into each cup (source).
“We think that it is a lot when compared to other foods that contain microplastics,” Nathalie Tufenkji of McGill University in Quebec, told The New Scientist. “Table salt, which has a relatively high microplastic content, has been reported to contain approximately 0.005 micrograms plastic per gram salt. A cup of tea contains thousands of times greater mass of plastic, at 16 micrograms per cup.”
A spot of tea… and some plastic?
When you look at a tea bag, plastic usually isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Yet about a quarter of each tea bag (from most brands) is comprised of this substance. You can watch how tea bags made (see it here) to see how plastic is incorporated.
snip
https://www.greenchildmagazine.com/plastic-in-tea-bags/
More at link:
