Love a cuppa?
We are a nation of tea drinkers. Whether it's in the office or sitting on the couch at home, we love nothing more than to have a cuppa in our hands.
It's warm, it's satisfying and it fills us with joy.
OK, not
that much joy but tea is pretty great, you know?
Well, it turns out that you may be ingesting billions of plastic particles by drinking the hot beverage. Yep,
billions.
Professor of Chemical Engineering, Nathalie Tufenkji published a study in the
Journal of Environmental Science & Technology and it revealed that some teabags were releasing an insane amount of particles into every cup.
The exact amount? 11 billion microplastics and three billion nanoplastics.
Dr Tufenkji told
Global News: “We were very, very surprised. We thought [it’d] maybe release a couple of hundred particles, maybe a few thousand.
“So we were really shocked when we saw they’re releasing billions of particles into a cup of tea.”
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and nylon were the two types of plastics found - but they don't come from your regular teabag (a.k.a Barry's or Lyon's).
They come from those ~*fancier*~ ones that you get in coffee shops or limited edition packs.
Safe to say in future we'll be staying away from those...
