well under safe human consumption levels set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Environmental experts agree — to a point.
“I read that sentence and go, well, is it time for us to re-evaluate the guidelines?” says Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist of marine chemistry and geochemistry with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.
According to David Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, “There is a visible global environmental crisis caused by plastic pollution, but this new research study indicates that invisible plastic nanoparticles released into our food and beverages from common plastics may be insidiously harming health.”
Andrews adds that “the Food and Drug Administration should move expeditiously to require more testing and disclosure of the chemicals and nanoparticles being released from plastic food contact materials, and take necessary action to ensure that these materials are not harming health.”
These nanoparticles are small enough to slip into your bloodstream and can wind up lodged in tissues and organs located throughout your body, Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University notes.
“We really don’t know what the impact of these particles is,” Halden adds. “Human exposure is increasing, and we lack the tools to even measure what is arriving in our bodies, where it is deposited and what it does there.”
Halden says asbestos causes harm because its tiny particles are inhaled and accumulate in lung tissue, causing inflammation that can lead to scarring and cancer.
Coffee Vs. Tea: Is One Better For Your Health?
“Asbestos itself is relatively benign. It’s an inorganic material,” Halden shares. “What makes it toxic and makes it kill 90,000 people a year is that it has particles that lodges in human tissue.”
For this study, Zangmeister and his colleagues poured ultra-high purity water into nylon slow-cooker bags and polyethylene-lined paper coffee cups, all obtained from different retailers.
Plastic cooking bags are used to keep food moist in the oven and make clean-up easier for slow cookers. A bag in a slow cooker kept hot for an hour leached about 35 trillion plastic nanoparticle per liter of water, the researchers found. Similarly, hot water poured into 12-fluid-ounce cups for 20 minutes and allowed to cool wound up leaching 5.1 trillion plastic nanoparticles per liter.
Reddy and Halden both praised the study, calling it landmark research due to the meticulous way the scientists eliminated all other potential sources of plastic pollution.
People concerned about these levels might consider bringing a metal or ceramic travel mug with them to the coffee shop, Zangmeister says.
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