A cup of tea with billions of hidden plastic bits

A single plastic teabag releases over eleven billion tiny plastic bits into your cup. Scientists at McGill University led by Professor Nathalie Tufenkji tested this. They brewed empty plastic teabags in hot water. Using electron microscopes they found two types of particles. The larger ones are microplastics and the smaller are nanoplastics. One cup contained 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics. This is thousands of times more plastic than in any other food or drink. They then exposed water fleas to the particles. The fleas survived but showed abnormal behavior and anatomy. More research is needed to know effects on humans. The study was published in Environmental Science and Technology.

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