Get plastics out of your body and the body of anyone you care about

[easy_c]

To avoid microplastics in my coffee I do pour over style brew. A couple big names are Chemex and Hario brewers and filters. You get one of those systems and then you're supposed to use a goose-neck kettle to properly control the flow rate.

I order a few pounds of organic roasted beans online and put most of it in the freezer (gotta get that free shipping!). If circumstances were right I'd order green beans and roast my own on demand.

How about those Keurig coffee pods though eh, those things must fill you with the maximal plastics per brew

Or buy a glass cold brewer. It's way less harsh on the stomach when prepared that way.

 

[FrancisK]

I have one of those crazy automatic coffee machines at the house and in my main office, the one that will make you any kind of coffee you want automatically. Well half the whole damn thing is plastic, I'm not going to use it anymore huge waste of money.....I don't know why I didn't even think about it when I got them.

I just picked up one of these guys for the house, got it today and inspected it the coffee never touches any plastic the inside is completely steel. For the office it wouldn't be large enough I'm thinking to get a big "urn" like the ones you see at large events, many of them are also entirely steel. This is pretty much the same concept just in a smaller form, going to test it out first.

View attachment 20489

Alright so update on this thing, I definitely do recommend! The coffee tastes better, less acidic and chemical tasting, even if you leave it and let the coffee stay hot. In a plastic maker you better drink that coffee as soon as it's ready otherwise it tastes like chemical sludge, not with this thing.

It's a little more involved than a plastic fantastic pot but nothing crazy and it's easy to clean, I'm very happy with it. Others have also commented that the coffee made with it is very good. I'm going to get a larger "urn" style one for the warehouse.

 

[FrancisK]

Drinks in glass bottles have more microplastics than plastic bottles

A team of investigators at France's state food agency has discovered that some glass bottles have more microplastics in them than other containers, including those made of plastic. The "surprising finding" came about in tests carried out by the Anses Laboratory for Food Safety, whose researchers...

www.yahoo.com

 

[ed plrbs unm]

Drinks in glass bottles have more microplastics than plastic bottles

A team of investigators at France's state food agency has discovered that some glass bottles have more microplastics in them than other containers, including those made of plastic. The "surprising finding" came about in tests carried out by the Anses Laboratory for Food Safety, whose researchers...

www.yahoo.com

Colour me skeptical.

"This research study brought to you by the plastic bottle producers association"

 

[Australia Sucks]

Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol

Genetically modified E coli used to create painkillers from material produced from plastic bottles

www.yahoo.com

 

[Steady Hands]

Drinks in glass bottles have more microplastics than plastic bottles

A team of investigators at France's state food agency has discovered that some glass bottles have more microplastics in them than other containers, including those made of plastic. The "surprising finding" came about in tests carried out by the Anses Laboratory for Food Safety, whose researchers...

www.yahoo.com

What's your take on this article?

As noted here, I've noticed that some posts with links to articles, long videos, etc are made without quotes, summaries, or comments. This may lead readers to wonder -- what's the value of clicking on this and reading/watching it? Has OP read/watched the whole thing or skimmed through it? Either way, what are OP's reflections? I know adding quotes or comments takes effort, but it saves the readership significant time. Thanks for your consideration.

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Here's a summary of the research with my take at the end.

The clickbait title doesn't capture the nuance of the article or the research, although the conclusion in the original paper -- i.e., the culprit being metal caps of the bottles -- is reflected in the Yahoo article:

Caps were suspected to be the main source of contamination, as the majority of particles isolated in beverages were identical to the colour of caps and shared the composition of the outer paint," the team explained in a paper published by Anses.

Original article (full text available)

Title: Microplastic contaminations in a set of beverages sold in France

In this study, the MPs found in the glass bottles corresponded to the
color and polymeric composition of the paint on the caps, which are
coated with alkyd thermosetting resin or PES/PET-based paint. In addition, encapsulation experiments with new caps and clean
bottles filled with water revealed the presence of MP identical to the cap
paint in the water. These results demonstrated that cap paint was a
source of MP contamination in bottles

One potential hypothesis is that a glass bottle with metal caps results in more scratching of the cap.

The results show that glass containers were more contaminated than
other packaging for all beverages except wine, because wine bottles
were closed with cork stoppers rather than metal caps.
It was noticed that most of the microplastics isolated from glass
bottles had the same color as the paint on the outer layer of the cap. FTIR
analysis of the paint on the metal cap revealed that it was mainly
composed of polyester, like the particles isolated from glass bottles,
which mainly belong to the polyester class. Therefore, it was hypothe-
sized that these particles could originate from the cap.

First, the inside and outside of the capsules were also observed under
binocular magnifying glass before use, and scratches were found on the
outer surface, as well as pieces of the capsule paint adsorbed to the in-
side one (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Observations of cracks onto the outer face of new capsules (column A) and observations of yellow particles onto the inner face of new capsules (column B & C).

Additional analyses looked at cleaning and rinsing caps

It was shown that when the caps were not pre-cleaned, 287.3 ± 81.4 MPs/L were found (Fig. 4). This MPs levels in the bottles significantly decreased (KW p-value < 0.001 - DB p-value < 0.001) when they were blown prior to encapsulation, with 105.8 ± 32.1 MPs/L, and reached to 86.7 ± 42.3 MPs/L when the caps were blown and rinsed beforehand. Interestingly, the analysis of the rinsing solution, water/ethanol/water mixture, contained an average of 47.8 ± 12.6 yellow particles per rinsed cap.

Fig. 4. Level of yellow paint particles (MPs/L) observed for the different capsule treatments: sealing with unclean capsules, with blown capsules and blown and rinsed capsules. For each treatment ten repetitions were tested. Stars represent the significant differences (** p-value <0.01; *** p value < 0.001).

My take

As the author's acknowledge -- toxicological data was not investigated, so it isn't possible to make assumptions about relative risk between the bottle samples analysed. Nonetheless this is interesting and useful research that can help shed light on better food and liquid storage practices.

I use glass and stainless steel containers as my go-to for storage; however, this article has made me think twice about the potential impact of scratched caps from the glass bottles I use for storing water and other liquids.

 

[ed plrbs unm]

What's your take on this article?

As noted here, I've noticed that some posts with links to articles, long videos, etc are made without quotes, summaries, or comments. This may lead readers to wonder -- what's the value of clicking on this and reading/watching it? Has OP read/watched the whole thing or skimmed through it? Either way, what are OP's reflections? I know adding quotes or comments takes effort, but it saves the readership significant time. Thanks for your consideration.

---

Here's a summary of the research with my take at the end.

The clickbait title doesn't capture the nuance of the article or the research, although the conclusion in the original paper -- i.e., the culprit being metal caps of the bottles -- is reflected in the Yahoo article:


Original article (full text available)



One potential hypothesis is that a glass bottle with metal caps results in more scratching of the cap.

Additional analyses looked at cleaning and rinsing caps

My take

As the author's acknowledge -- toxicological data was not investigated, so it isn't possible to make assumptions about relative risk between the bottle samples analysed. Nonetheless this is interesting and useful research that can help shed light on better food and liquid storage practices.

I use glass and stainless steel containers as my go-to for storage; however, this article has made me think twice about the potential impact of scratched caps from the glass bottles I use for storing water and other liquids.

Thank you for the deep dive; I did not go that far but what caused me to be doubtful is the claim that all of the plastic contamination in glass bottles came from the caps. If the bottle is standing upright, the liquid won't even be in contact with the cap? Then it referred to paint leaching through the plastic cap to contaminate the water.