The bottled water industry tends to play on themes of purity and healthy living. It represents 119 billion euros (147 billion dollars) of turnover per year. Yet this news study published on the Orb Media media platform reveals that bottled water is contaminated with plastic microparticles.
Researchers tested bottled water from 11 brands purchased at 19 locations in nine countries around the world to analyze the microplastic dosage. The contaminant was identified in 93% of the samples in sometimes very variable amounts.
The overall average was 325 particles per liter. The researchers found polypropylene, nylon and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). On average, the researchers identified 10.4 particles in each liter of water with a size of 0.10 millimeters.
“Its impact on human health is unknown. We do not yet know how many of these particles actually reach our bloodstream. Many of them are too large to penetrate so deep into our bodies. But what if some were small enough to pass through it. gut, there are concerns about the physical invasion of tissues and the chemical load associated with plastics, ”said Rolf Halden, director of the Environmental Health Engineering Center at Arizona State University in the United States.
In September 2017, the Orbmédia site published a study revealing that tap water is also contaminated with plastic microparticles.
Read also:
Raw water, the (dangerous) trend of untreated water in the United States
Polluted water kills 500,000 people a year
Plastic food containers can be a hazard
