Nanoplastics in water – surprisingly large amounts discovered and its not good

https://molecularspec.substack.com/p/nanoplastics-in-water-surprisingly

by adomasm3 • 2 years ago

55 63 2 years ago

molecularspec.substack.com

Fauntleroy• 2 years ago

Are there any consumer devices that are capable of filtering out any amount of micro or nano plastics? I already avoid plastic bottles as much as I reasonably can, and I'd like to make sure my tap water is as not terrible as possible.

metadat• 2 years ago

A reverse-osmosis water filtration system will significantly reduce the amount of microplastics present.

untech• 2 years ago

The original article suggests that reverse-osmosis filters might generate nanoplastics

monetus• 2 years ago

Lots of activated charcoal does help to an extent, which is a standard for filters. The more, the better, which inevitably slows the water to a trickle. I use a kichu water filter(1) in an old Brita, but I have had my eye on an a glass dafi pitcher which should hold it aa well. I pack it full, and let it sit for a day if possible - then dump it in another glass pitcher with a little charcoal stick inside that.

https://kishucharcoal.com/shop/brita-reuseable-filter-501/

As the sibling says, reverse osmosis is the best.

jna_sh• 2 years ago

Doesn’t the post link to an article that suggests reverse osmosis membranes may be responsible for some of these nanoplastics? Am I misreading this?

RobertRoberts• 2 years ago

It seems reverse osmosis is a _cause_ of nanoplastics.

https://apnews.com/article/plastic-nano-bottled-drinking-wat...

WA• 2 years ago

Water filters can be sources of all kinds of germs. Depending on your local water quality, it might make sense to not use them at all.

zahma3• 2 years ago

ZeroWater makes a carafe that reduces total dissolved solids to 0 ppm, including PFAs and microplastics, or so they claim. I have tested it with two different monitors, and it is indeed 0 ppm, which is good enough to be considered distilled water by the FDA. The filter does not sustain that level of efficiency for very long if there are lots of solids to clog it (i.e. ymmv depending on your water source. Some people prefilter, but who has space and time for that?). I’m not sure it’s capable of filtering to the nanometer scale, but then again I’m not sure anything can, which is why this is so frightening for life forms.

Other devices you can install with some rudimentary plumbing knowledge are BWT or Pentaire reverse osmosis filters. They do a good enough job at filtering, though they waste a lot of water in the process. I use these at work and I the Pentaire allows you to control ppm, which is suitable for coffee aficionados. You can always remineralize your water once you get the junk out.

declaredapple2• 2 years ago

ZeroWater makes a carafe that reduces total dissolved solids to 0 ppm, including PFAs and microplastics, or so they claim.

ZeroWater uses an ion exchange filter - It's my understanding that many (most?) micro plastics are not dissolved and/or are not charged meaning it won't effectively filter most microplastics.

Similarly they aren't designed to filter bacteria.

The current system is meant to be used with municipally treated, potable water as the current filter will not remove microbiological contaminants.

https://zerowater.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions

choilive• 2 years ago

The problem isn't just the water supply. Its in your food, the soil, your clothes, your furniture, the air. LITERALLY everywhere. Theres a study that was done where a group avoided the use of plastic containers to consume food+water vs a group that only used plastic containers and it showed that it made no significant difference in the amount of microplastics they were consuming.

XorNot4• 2 years ago

The vast majority of your plastic exposure is from inhalation due to the degradation of rubber tires on roadways.

SmooL• 2 years ago

Genuine question: are the health risks really that bad? Plastic has been around for decades - surely also then these micro/nano plastics have been around for decades? I can't help but feel like if there were obvious and large health effects that we'd have noticed by now.

r0ckarong• 2 years ago

The big problem I guess is to establish correlation between precisely the plastics and whatever effects we should "see". We have plenty of cancer, fodd intolerances, fertility problems, mental and other health issue sthat seemingly never existed to this extend but what they're actually caused by is very hard to determine.

saiya-jin2• 2 years ago

They did exist, and so did various cancers, albeit in lesser concentrations. People mostly died younger and nobody cared nor investigated.

And its not that big mystery - people got properly dumb and do literally everything to destroy themselves, and completely ignore advices coming from every direction about healthy living. Its not 'they evil corps', is us(them) dumb shits who can't act like balanced mature adults and contain those few vices you may gather as life goes along. You can't tackle all of it, but most folks are not even trying and just complain.

A random example - all guys everywhere would massively benefit from consistently wearing loose pants and underwear if they want to increase their fertility, especially in summer. It would skyrocket in stats. Now show me how popular this 'simple trick' is in mass media. There, maybe 30% of couple infertility cases tackled.

I don't want to downplay the topic, the idea that nano-plastic-infested meat is grilled/cooked/even just boiled and eaten by literally everybody... we know what great things high heat does to all plastics, and eating that yummy is probably a bullet train to ruined health decades down the line.

zahma3• 2 years ago

Start here: https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2020/p...

The answer is yes, and it is absolutely important. If plastics disrupt our endocrine system, then that touches every facet of our bodies from development, sexual health, mental health, disease, and more. We can’t underestimate the effects plastic exposure has on our health.

XorNot4• 2 years ago

That article is talking about plasticizers - small molecules added to plastics - not plastics as the source of risk.

This is the same reason "BPA-free" drink bottles are now a thing.

throwanem4• 2 years ago

If there were subtle and dose-dependent (or dose-rate dependent) and large health effects, though, we could reasonably expect only to have started noticing them around now.

edit: I don't mind that this is getting downvoted, but I would like to know why. What have I overlooked?

mjhay• 2 years ago

Don't say things people don't want to hear.

declaredapple2• 2 years ago

Keep in mind that a lot of the microplastics come from "macroplastics" (?) that have broken down.

There's few things that destroy them further.

That and many of the effects may not occur until a sufficient amount of microplastics have accumulated which we may only now be approaching.

The biggest issue is that they break down so poorly. Even if we stopped all plastic production today, the total amount of microplastics will only accumulate

lm284692• 2 years ago

A quick Google search will make it very clear that we do detect problems already, that it's cumulative and that it's getting worse over time

simmanian2• 2 years ago

I would like to remind people that...

+ the primary source of microplastic particle generation in most households is the washing and drying of (plastic) clothes. I don't have evidence to back this up, but I have a feeling you breathe in more plastic fiber particles every time you remove lint from your dryer than you ingest through your mouth the whole year.

+ the more processed a food is, the higher its microplastic concentration [1] - apparently breaded shrimp is the worst.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/01/12/...

saiya-jin2• 2 years ago

Links to paywalled articles will not win you many friends around here

throwanem4• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/QwiaS

schiffern• 2 years ago

Even the simple act of putting on a synthetic shirt or sweatshirt has you at the epicenter of a large "puff" of microplastic dust.

Source: put on a hoodie while standing in a sunbeam.

simmanian2• 2 years ago

I am conflicted every time my wife brings home Patagonia she received for free at work

therein• 2 years ago

I am very concerned by this really. After putting on that hoodie, take a look at your fingertips, and then your eyelashes. Microplastic fibers are everywhere and they are electrostatically attracted to you. At times it will feel like they are chasing you.

pdonis4• 2 years ago

When you put the numbers in context, they are tiny.

For example, consider this comparison: when you take a pill of some drug, say an aspirin tablet, how much of the active ingredient (aspirin in this case) are in that pill? And how many bottles of water would you have to drink to put the same amount of nanoplastics (treating them as an "active ingredient") into your body?

Here's a back of the envelope calculation: suppose the concentration of nanoplastics is 10 nanograms per liter (about what is claimed in the article). A liter is about one (fairly large) bottle of water, so say 10 nanograms per bottle. A standard aspirin tablet has 325,000,000 nanograms (325 milligrams) of aspirin in it, or 32.5 million times as much active ingredient. So you would have to drink 32.5 million 1-liter bottles of water to expect the same general order of magnitude of "active ingredient" effects on your body as one aspirin tablet. If you drank one bottle of water per second, it would take you more than 10 years to drink that much water.

So I don't see any reason to forgo bottled water on these grounds. Certainly not in favor of tap water, which is much more subject to how careful your municipality's water purification process is (not to mention various possible sources of contamination in the water lines between the purification plant and the water tower and you).

skeletonhaver• 2 years ago

Appreciate the context, but the magnitude of effect of drugs also varies by some orders of magnitude - so it's possible/likely that the concentrations that build up over a lifetime in the body could be having some negative effect.

pdonis4• 2 years ago

it's possible/likely that the concentrations that build up over a lifetime in the body could be having some negative effect.

See my response to globular-toast downthread.

thfuran• 2 years ago

So you would have to drink 32.5 million 1-liter bottles of water to expect the same general order of magnitude of "active ingredient" effects on your body as one aspirin tablet.

Only if aspirin is what the bottle is leeching into the water.

BytesAndGears• 2 years ago

Yeah agreed, worth noting that it only takes ~100-1000 nanograms of Botulinum toxin to kill you. So it’s kind of irrelevant to compare different substances toxicity based on quantity alone. The toxic levels of aspirin are totally irrelevant for a different substance

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin

ctrl-j• 2 years ago

The NIH has begun doing studies on the effects of nanoplastics, and it appears there is evidence for buildup in the liver [1]. If asprin had a long half-life in your body, you'd have a maximum lifetime dose. The reason it makes a good medicine is due to the fact that it has a positive effect and leaves your body in a timely manner.

A good example in this instance is Lead. Its bad to have lead in your water even in relatively small amounts, because the half-life of lead in your soft tissues is months, and in your bone is 20-30 years. If nanoplastics end up being similar, you could end up with liver damage, or other medical complications if your exposure is high.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9610555/

cma• 2 years ago

There would be very little economic effect if everyone in the world got a reverse osmosis drinking-water only filter ($200 every 10-15 years, $20-30 a year). Though we don't have any kind of structure that could actually make that happen.

Terr_• 2 years ago

Even if you assume permanent lifetime build up, it seems like we're talking about ~10 nanograms per liter (as per grandparent post) of these plastics versus 15,000 nanograms per liter of lead that meets EPA safety limits.

I find it hard to assume the plastic should be more than a thousand times more worrisome than lead on a per-gram basis (That said, we have persistently underestimated the negative effects of the element.)

globular-toast2• 2 years ago

Yeah but things like aspirin don't accumulate in the body. If the plastics are accumulating then you might very well have an active dose after years of consumption. People born today are going to be consuming this stuff every day for their entire lives.

pdonis4• 2 years ago

If the plastics are accumulating then you might very well have an active dose after years of consumption.

After how many years of consumption? If we suppose that every single nanoplastic molecule that enters your body never leaves it (which is not going to be the case, but will give us an absolute lower bound to the time required), it would still take 32.5 million one-liter bottles to accumulate as much as one aspirin tablet. Say you drink six of those bottles a day, which is more than just about anyone actually drinks. That's about 2200 bottles a year. Meaning it would take you about 16,000 years to accumulate as much as one aspirin tablet.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

If nano plastics are like protein sized wouldn’t the immune system treat it like any other foreign biological materials of similar size?

XorNot4• 2 years ago

One thing worth considering is we in fact have a model for this: tattoos, and tattoo-ink. This is in fact the mechanism by which tattoos are removed by laser (the particles are exploded into ones small enough for the immune system to carry off quickly - as opposed to the gradual fading with time which happens).

One tattoo is a larger exposure of particulate contaminants to the skin then anyone will ingest in a lifetime from the environmental contamination.

sunshine_reggae• 2 years ago

That's only 1 reason why you distill all your drinking water.

iancmceachern3• 2 years ago

I've heard this can cause other problems, do you add minerals back in?

fellowniusmonk• 2 years ago

What trace minerals would a person get in tap water that they wouldn't get through food in their diet?

jemmyw• 2 years ago

Pass water through plastic piping, through a filtration system that includes a lot of plastic including plastic membranes, output into a plastic bottle. Then express surprise that the water has a tiny amount of plastic in it.

Gigachad2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't think this is even the biggest source. Probably half the dust in your house is plastic. Textiles and thread are mostly plastic now and they kick off tiny plastic dust constantly.

bilsbie• 2 years ago

I’m so annoyed all the water filters are made of plastic

senectus1• 2 years ago

and tend to sell wrapped in a single use plastic, in a cardboard box that often is also plastic wrapped.

leetharris• 2 years ago

This is just fear porn from an extremely unqualified person (studied finance, has never worked in biology or any science) that has an "AI startup."

Their startup, which has 2 employees according to LinkedIn, is billed as such:

"Volatile AI researches and innovates in the field of chemical analysis and molecule detection."

A finance guy with absolutely no credentials is writing blog posts telling us how dangerous these nanoplastics are while pitching us his startup that can "detect molecules with AI."

I hate to see this absolute junk on HackerNews.

lend000• 2 years ago

While I'd agree that the article itself is mediocre, it does list all its sources, which seem perfectly valid. This is just a shallow dismissal and an appeal to authority. It irks me how some people think it's impossible to have enough expertise to contribute to multiple fields without some formal pedigree. That may be true for you, and may even be true for the author of the article, but it's not true as a generalization.

If you're going to shit all over someone's work, at least come up with legitimate reasons.

8580• 2 years ago

It becomes more and more obvious that eventually all plastic needs to be removed, perhaps by a genetically modified bacteria that can digest it.

Nanoplastics in water – surprisingly large amounts discovered and its not good

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