The last time I bought mineral water from plastic bottles in sari-sari stores was about two weeks ago. Now, I am bringing a tin container I bought when I visited the United States last year. I put my drinking water in the said container.
What happened? I had a change of heart when I learned the result of a recent study that analyzed three brands of bottled water in the US. The researchers found a liter contained a quarter of a million pieces of microscopically small plastic.
The overwhelming evidence of the study was reported by Cara Lynn Shultz in People magazine. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“With laser-powered microscopes, researchers analyzed samples from three brands of bottled water and discovered that a liter contained 110,000 to 400,000 pieces of plastic per liter,” Shultz wrote.
That’s an average of about 240,000 miniscule particles of plastic.
According to the study authors, 90% of the plastic pieces were not microplastics, but nanoplastics, which are even smaller than microplastics, and “believed to be more toxic since their smaller size renders them much more amenable, compared to microplastics, to enter the human body,” the study said.
The National Ocean Service of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes microplastics (MPs) are plastic debris that are “less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a pencil eraser).
Nanoplastics (NPs) are too small to be noticed by the human eye. They are more commonly referred to as “plastic particles with a range in diameter from 1 to 100 or 1000 nm (nanometer),” according to the National Library of Medicine.
To put that size in perspective, there are 10 million nanometers in a centimeter.
“The researchers believed the plastic came from the bottle itself, as well as from the filtration system used by the water companies – which is intended to remove pollutants,” Shultz wrote.
Phoebe Stapleton, study co-author and a toxicologist, was quoted as saying by NBC News that the potential health impact is “currently under review. We don’t know if it’s dangerous or how dangerous.”
However, a study published in the National Library of Medicine showed “the results of cellular and animal experiments have shown that microplastics can affect various systems in the human body, including the digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems.”
Plastic bottles were first used commercially in 1947 but it didn’t catch attention because they were expensive to make. In 1973, Engr. Nathaniel Wyeth patented polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, which could withstand the pressure of carbonated liquids.
When PET was commercially introduced, plastic bottles became popular with both manufacturers and customers because they are lighter, cheaper and easier to transport than glass bottles.
But the biggest advantage of plastic bottles over their glass counterparts is their superior resistance to breakage, in both production and transportation. As a result, the food industry replaced glass bottles with plastic bottles.
“Plastic bottles are commonly made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is petroleum-based and non-renewable,” writes theonemovement.co’s Ariana Palmeiri. If you fill a plastic water bottle so it is about 25% full, that’s about how much oil takes to make the bottle.
As they are handy, bottled water is very popular. In fact, one million plastic water bottles are sold every minute globally, The Guardian reports. That’s about 20,000 bottles every second.
What most people don’t know is that water left in a plastic bottle for a long time is not safe to drink. Health experts claim that although water, in and of itself, does not go bad (the reason why there’s no expiration dates), the plastic bottle water is contained in does “expire.”
“Typically, water is bottled in PET for retail bottles,” explains drinkwater.com. “What’s alarming about this type of bottle is that plastics contaminate the liquid bottle once expired or exposed to excessive heat, including exposure to sunlight or hot cars. The toxic chemicals that are contained in this plastic will enter the water, not only affecting the taste of the water but also creating serious health implications for the consumer, as well.”
Although there’s really no precise way to predict exactly when the plastic will leach into the water, “the two-year expiration date is more of a guess of when the water bottle is most likely to have been exposed to heat or when it’s starting to degrade.”
Although PET bottles are approved for single use and for reuse, many manufacturers and consumer advocates urge the public to limit their PET bottles to one time use only. Plastic bottles are discouraged from being used, especially those that show even slight signs of wear and tear, such as cracks or dings.
“These allow chemicals to leach out of them more readily. Keep in mind that tears can be microscopic and hard to see. That’s one reason why one-use-only plastic bottles aren’t recommended for reuse,” writes healthline.com’s Corey Whelan.
“Use plastic bottles with caution,” Whelan urges. “Never heat or reuse them.”
