What's in your Water?

I know you are thinking of another boring blog about how plastic bottles are not good for you. I am happy that we all at least kind of know that. But I was just baffled by the number of microplastics that are there in just 1 bottle. So get ready to hear the staggering number of nano plastics (particle size in nanometers, 0.000000001m) in a 1-liter bottle of water can be anywhere between110,000 to 400,000, averaging at around 240,000!!!!!! How did the scientists count these ??? A research team led by Drs. Wei Min and Beizhan Yan of Columbia University used a modified powerful imaging technique called stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy. The method uses focused laser beams on samples to stimulate certain molecules to emit unique detectable light signals. Now you are thinking how in the world did they keep an accurate count? They developed an algorithm based on machine learning to detect seven common types of plastic.

What is the difference between microplastics and nanoplastics....yes, it's all about the size. Micro means a millionth of a meter while nano is 1000 times smaller than even that. Much of the plastic comes likely from the bottle itself and the reverse osmosis membrane filter used to keep out other contaminants. Are these nanoplastics harmful? The thought is yes, but concrete scientific evidence is still needed to prove this hypothesis.WHO report on microplastics in drinking water (now we are talking all, not just bottled water) contains abundant amounts of microplastics which likely contaminate the groundwater source through permeating and plastic pollution.

Though we don't 100% know how these damage our body, but particles these small in size can get inside cells very easily! How can we avoid that? According to a recent publication, Boiling tap water promotes CaCO3 nucleation on nano/microplastics (NMPs), resulting in the encapsulation and aggregation of NMPs within CaCO3 incrusts. This is an easy way to reduce the amount of micro and nanoplastics in drinking water!

So next time you grab a bottle or a glass, wonder, whats in your water?

1.  Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy. Qian N, Gao X, Lang X, Deng H, Bratu TM, Chen Q, Stapleton P, Yan B, Min W. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Jan 16;121(3):e2300582121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2300582121. Epub 2024 Jan 8. PMID: 38190543.

2. Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics Zimin Yu, Jia-Jia Wang, Liang-Ying Liu, Zhanjun Li, and Eddy Y. Zeng Environmental Science & Technology Letters Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00081