
Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study - nothrows
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bottled-water-microplastics-1.4575045
======
djsumdog
Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most
developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of
fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup.

For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting
municipal water supplies.

Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation.
They prop up a terrible industry, generate tons of waste, use tons of oil and
it's less clean than just drinking from a water fountain.

Edit: the documentary Tapped is a great film about the bottled water industry,
and Blue Gold is a good one about the water industry in general.

~~~
awareBrah
what do you suggest for people who cannot tolerate the taste of some tap
water. The one in my area taste very metallic and makes tea/coffee brewed with
it have an unpleasant flavor. I bought a brita-like water filter with great
reviews on amazon, but despite that, some of the metallic flavor remains. My
old home had a reverse osmosis system which tasted amazing, but I'm not going
to invest in a super expensive water system for the apartment I am renting. I
just want good tasting water

~~~
vatys
You can get a reverse osmosis system for ~$150. Maybe not cheap, but not super
expensive either. Even if you're renting for a year and leave it behind that's
less then $0.50 a day over one year.

~~~
alfanick
Which leaves you with classical-clean-US-water - no taste, nothing. Doesn't
taste good, doesn't taste bad, it's just not there.

~~~
acdanger
The best-tasting glass of water I've ever had was at the Galway Bay Hotel in
Ireland. It tasted like slightly sweet and mossy. I've wanted to recreate that
flavor in water ever since, but have no idea where to start.

------
quantumwoke
For anyone else wondering what effect microplastics actually have on the human
body, it looks like the effects are still up in the air. Animal studies [0]
show that microplastics can be taken up by tissue and circulation, and they
are also present in the air [1]. Not sure what impact drinking bottled water
would have on concentration inside the body. I couldn't find any long term
studies on their effect on cancer, which is my main concern for any foreign
contaminant entering the body.

Food (or drink :) for thought!

[0]
[https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ieam.5...](https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ieam.5630030412)

[1]
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71279-6_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71279-6_13)

~~~
hinkley
We know that a lot of nasty (carcinogenic) chemicals will bond to plastics,
poisoning any animal that ingests it.

If you can't get the plastics out of the water you can't get the other
chemicals out, because the plastic has already grabbed it.

~~~
hinkley
Citation for downvoters:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23270427](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23270427)

------
sparrish
Or not..

"believed to be microplastics"

"there is a chance the Nile Red dye is adhering to another unknown substance
other than plastic."

So it may, or may not be microplastics that they found/counted.

~~~
dumbfounder
Not only that, but we have no idea what the "safe levels" are. They say it's
only roughly double that of tap water, which doesn't seem alarming to me.

~~~
craftyguy
That's not too surprising, given that this problem of consuming plastics is a
relatively new one. There likely hasn't been enough time to fully understand
the implications of eating tiny plastic particles. I doubt that they are _all_
expelled from your body with other wastes given that this isn't something your
body naturally deals with. More research is needed.

------
freebear
Tap water is about the same, old one:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-
fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals)

This is just our devouring of the planet, nothing to see here. Now reinsert
head in ass and press play.

~~~
Panoramix
At least tap water doesn't come in disposable plastic bottles that end up as
microplastics in our water supply

------
seszett
Here are the actual results: [https://orbmedia.org/stories/plus-
plastic](https://orbmedia.org/stories/plus-plastic)

I wish there had been more European water brands tested, as out of this list I
only know Evian and San Pellegrino, and they are the two least contaminated
brands, but they are also a bit more upscale than what most people drink.

~~~
nugi
They also tend to come in glass or cans.

------
sorenn111
While there may be some questions regarding the exact methodologies used in
this study and its accuracy, it is still pretty fucking scary to hear that
microplastics are in so much of the water we drink and bottled companies are
not filtering it out sufficiently.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Especially considering that the oil filter in your car is good to tens of
microns for tens of thousands of gallons and costs ~$5.

You'd think that if you're running an industrial plant (at a scale where
multi-stage filters, centrifugal separation, etc, etc are economically viable)
you'd be able to do a heck of a lot better than 10 100 micron particles per
liter.

~~~
therein
To be fair, I think these microplastics accumulate in the water after they
have been bottled.

~~~
Falling3
I didn't think it had anything to do with plastic from the bottles the water
is sold in. Where is that assumption coming from?

~~~
lostconfused
"It's not clear how the plastic is getting into the bottled water — whether
it's the water source itself or the air or the manufacturing and bottling
process.

"Even the simple act of opening the cap could cause plastic to be chipping off
the cap," Mason said."

------
danbruc
0.1 millimeter or larger is not really that small, it's the size of fine sand.
I admittedly never look for sand in bottled water but just assumed that such
large particles would never make it through the filters.

------
antibland
I use a Berkey filtration system and feel mildly optimistic about not drinking
plastic every time I fill my glass. From late September, 2017 [0].

> "There is nowhere really where you can say these are being trapped 100%. In
> terms of fibres, the diameter is 10 microns across and it would be very
> unusual to find that level of filtration in our drinking water systems.”
> With that being said, we know that the berkey can filter down to 2 microns
> and less, so until testing is done, we can only state that the berkey would
> be filtering out more of these microplastics than your town's municipal
> water filtering system

[0]([https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/blog/category/micropla...](https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/blog/category/microplastics/))

~~~
drharby
Hmmm...the site cites this exact study in its marketing material.

Hmmmmm

------
Dirlewanger
Scary shit. An aside: what are people using for tap filters? Is Brita still
the go-to company, or are there other better solutions?

~~~
ericd
Pur supposedly filters out a greater percentage of many different solutes than
the standard Brita, but it looks like Brita came out with a new filter that
does better than their old one. A longer discussion:
[https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-water-filter-
pitcher/](https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-water-filter-pitcher/)

------
AdmiralAsshat
Hmm. That's concerning.

I had more or less switched entirely off bottled water and now only use a
combination of filtered tap water + reusable insulated bottles ala Kleen
Kanteen at home and work, but I have recently started buying more sparkling
water / club soda in an attempt to ween myself off Coke.

Perhaps it's time I take the plunge and buy a SodaStream or comparable water
carbonator.

~~~
illegalsmile
I have a kegerator and always have 5 gallons of soda water on tap, I highly
recommend making your own water. I would buy a 5 pound tank of CO2 and a few
2L bottles instead of a soda stream.

------
pombrand
I worked in a lab and where we used an atomic force microscope to scan single
DNA strands on flat surfaces. At first we couldn't "read" anything as the
surface was covered in gunk from the water we used, switching to water in
glass bottles fixed this.

------
LinuxBender
I live in the U.S. The tap water in my neck of the woods is disgusting. It is
a water tank on top of a hill that has open vents and is surrounded by trees,
moss and much worse. There is nothing stopping anyone from throwing a water
balloon filled with (insert whatever) at the vent. Hikers pass it every day at
vent level. The pipes leading up to it leak about 20k gallons of water into
the mountainside every day. There are testing taps every few miles on my road
and I see them sometimes taking samples. I do not feel comfortable even
showering in this water. I certainly would not drink it intentionally.

For bottled water, I get the bottles made of rigid plastic that may have less
chance of leaching chemicals over a short period of time. Only time will tell
if I chose correctly.

------
pfarnsworth
Now that we know that microplastics are in our water supply, what do we do to
protect ourselves? Do reverse osmosis filters, etc, at home get rid of these
plastics? It certainly sounds dangerous and scary but I don't know what I need
to do or should do, which is frustrating.

~~~
gascan
Petition your local government to treat municipal water for microplastics.
Petition your federal government to tackle the root problem of why
microplastics end up in the water in the first place.

------
artursapek
When we moved to Boulder from New York recently we got some really weird looks
for buying a plastic bottle of water at the store. I actually felt some joy
from receiving that tacit disapproval. Soon after we joined the herd in using
stainless steel bottles in our car, backpacks, etc - something we aspired to
in New York but was hard to commit to when there's a deli on every corner.

~~~
always_good
>we got some really weird looks

I have a hard time believing a movie scene played out in the 7-11 with
everyone staring at you for buying a bottle of water.

Or, if you looked around and people were crinkling their eyebrows at you, I
wouldn't assume it was because of the bottled water.

------
woolvalley
I wonder what the contamination stats are for canned water, carton water and
glass bottle water. I do drink a lot of carbonated lacroix.

------
spodek
Let's remember the macroplastic of the bottle holding the water that outside
Flint, MI is unnecessary pollution in nearly every country of people reading
these words.

We can all stop buying bottled water. It won't solve every problem, but it
will solve a lot of this one, while saving you money and focusing people on
cleaning your current sources.

------
ben509
I was wondering if there was anything that established what microplastics
actually do. Found an interesting paper here:
[http://resodema.org/publications/publication9.pdf](http://resodema.org/publications/publication9.pdf)

~~~
jtbayly
For the curious, the paper only addresses marine biology, according to the
abstract.

------
TheGrassyKnoll
"It's so difficult to get people to care about things they can't see."

------
hateful
I drink a specific brand of bottled water because I don't like the taste of
tap water. Filtering it takes some of the bad taste away, but adds none of the
good.

I'll have to add "microplastic" as another one of my favorite spices.

~~~
Raphmedia
You could probably learn what minerals is in it, buy a boatload of it in bulk
for $5 and live healthy and happy for the rest of your life.

------
makecheck
More than once I felt mild nausea after drinking directly from a bottle,
whereas pouring the water out of the bottle into a glass was fine.

I suspect it’s not just what’s in the water but the bottle itself that’s not
good.

~~~
always_good
You're saying the mere action of touching your lips to the bottle is what
induced nausea?

------
Finster
Couldn't the microplastics just come from the plastic bottles the water is
bottled in?

------
hello_person
I'm surprised we are not using plant based plastics.

------
hello_person
We should move to plant based plastics.

~~~
culot
How would that be better?

~~~
acct1771
If you use the right plants, it probably won't be carcinogenic/non-
biodegradable. ("Bio" being your insides)

~~~
c22
From what I understand "bioplastic" is just "plastic" made from non-petroleum
sources. "Biodegradable" or "compostable" plastic is just microplastic
particles held together with cellulose. Neither of these necessarily sound
better for putting in my body.

------
ttsda
Keep in mind they only tested 11 brands from 9 countries.

~~~
ricardobeat
“Only” 250 bottles from 11 brands and 9 countries from different continents. I
think this is more than anyone could ask for for an initial study, usually it
would be done for a single region.

------
Jyaif
According to them: Avoid Nestle Pure Life. San Pellegrino, Evian, and Dasani
are OK.

~~~
jaclaz
>According to them: Avoid Nestle Pure Life. San Pellegrino, Evian, and Dasani
are OK.

Naah, water is usually bottled locally, they tested some brands in:

U.S., Kenya, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mexico and Thailand

(and called it "global"), but a same brand may - even in the same country -
come from a different spring or bottling plant, so you are never "safe" (nor
"in danger") because of this or that brand.

Just in case the actual "paper" (actualy only a "report"):

[https://orbmedia.org/sites/default/files/FinalBottledWaterRe...](https://orbmedia.org/sites/default/files/FinalBottledWaterReport.pdf)

And as a side note/observation, the classification of any plastic particle
smaller than 5 millimeters as "microplastics" has been given (and it makes
sense) in the context of marine/ocean related sciences:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics)

it makes (to me) little sense to call "micro" anything that can be seen by the
naked eye in the context of impurities in a bottle of water.

5 mm?

Come on, they are nearly the size of marbles we played with as kids ...

~~~
seszett
I don't know about the others but Evian and San Pellegrino each come from one
source, respectively situated in Évian-les-Bains, France and San Pellegrino
Terme, Italy.

~~~
jaclaz
>I don't know about the others but Evian and San Pellegrino each come from one
source, respectively situated in Évian-les-Bains, France and San Pellegrino
Terme, Italy.

Yes, that applies to San Pellegrino (and most probably Evian also) but San
Pellegrino (the company, which is anyway Nestlè) has 6 bottling plants in
Italy:

[https://www.sanpellegrino-
corporate.it/it/stabilimenti-59](https://www.sanpellegrino-
corporate.it/it/stabilimenti-59)

While it is true that San Pellegrino brand water is exclusively coming from
San Pellegrino (and as well Acqua Panna comes from Scarperia only and
Levissima comes from Cepina Valdisotto only) the other three plants are anyway
marked as "Nestlè Vera" (with of course a distincion on the spring,
respectively "fonte in Bosco", "fonte Santa Rosalia", "fonte Naturae")[1].

I believe (possibly I am wrong) that in many (non-EU) countries the bottled
water is more like a "pure brand" than a "specific spring".

[1]See page 63 of this .pdf:

[https://www.sanpellegrino-
corporate.it/files/valorecondiviso...](https://www.sanpellegrino-
corporate.it/files/valorecondiviso/RapportoCSV.pdf)

------
MaggieL
Somebody got paid to find out if water in plastic bottles has plastic in it.

