Many tea bags are made from paper with added plastic fibers for extra strength. As you heat them, like when pouring hot water over them, some of the particles (both paper, plastic, and whatever other additives) release into your cup.
And I assume next you’ll tell me that pouring boiling water into plastic bottles or maybe even Styrofoam cups is another way people introduce microplastics into their systems unwittingly. That’s just too bizarre.
Well… pretty much all plastics shed microplastics, it’s a matter of how much. Scratching, rubbing, heating without melting, or starting with loosely packed fibres… accelerate the process.
There’s estimates that weekly we ingest enough microplastics to make a credit card, which is truly dystopian. I wonder how much more it was during my ballpen cap chewing phase. All the variety of compounds used to manufacture them, under more or less control, are a Pandora’s box of possible issues.
Many tea bags are made from paper with added plastic fibers for extra strength. As you heat them, like when pouring hot water over them, some of the particles (both paper, plastic, and whatever other additives) release into your cup.
And I assume next you’ll tell me that pouring boiling water into plastic bottles or maybe even Styrofoam cups is another way people introduce microplastics into their systems unwittingly. That’s just too bizarre.
Well… pretty much all plastics shed microplastics, it’s a matter of how much. Scratching, rubbing, heating without melting, or starting with loosely packed fibres… accelerate the process.
There’s estimates that weekly we ingest enough microplastics to make a credit card, which is truly dystopian. I wonder how much more it was during my ballpen cap chewing phase. All the variety of compounds used to manufacture them, under more or less control, are a Pandora’s box of possible issues.