this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
36 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22109 readers
95 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Many tea bags are made from paper with added plastic fibers for extra strength. As you heat them, like when pouring hot water over them, some of the particles (both paper, plastic, and whatever other additives) release into your cup.
And I assume next you'll tell me that pouring boiling water into plastic bottles or maybe even Styrofoam cups is another way people introduce microplastics into their systems unwittingly. That's just too bizarre.
Well... pretty much all plastics shed microplastics, it's a matter of how much. Scratching, rubbing, heating without melting, or starting with loosely packed fibres... accelerate the process.
There's estimates that weekly we ingest enough microplastics to make a credit card, which is truly dystopian. I wonder how much more it was during my ballpen cap chewing phase. All the variety of compounds used to manufacture them, under more or less control, are a Pandora's box of possible issues.
I appreciate you commenting to me with full support and care for the topic at hand. It is quite educational for anyone who happens across it and doesn't already understand how simple it is for plastics to leech their way into basically anything, and I suspect the reason most places stopped using Styrofoam containers quite awhile ago (plus how absolutely terrible it is for the environment). I'm hopeful for a plastic free future, there are some really good alternatives coming down the pipeline for now and it will be interesting to see which of the various technologies becomes mainstream. I'm rooting for seaweed personally. I also really like the work that has been done with various fungi for form fitting packing supplies.