How much plastic is there in your packaged water A worldwide study by a U.S.-based journalistic organisation suggests that the level of microscopic plastic particles could have implications for human health Bottled water is usually marketed as the very essence of purity. It’s the fastest-growing beverage market in the world, valued at $147 billion a year. But new research by Orb Media, a non-profit journalism organisation based in Washington, D.C., shows that a single bottle can hold dozens, or possibly even thousands, of microscopic plastic particles. Tests on more than 250 bottles from 11 brands reveal contamination with plastic, including polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). When contacted by reporters, two leading brands confirmed their products contained microplastic, but they said Orb’s study significantly overstates the amount. For plastic particles in the 100-micron, or 0.1-mm size range, tests conducted for Orb at the State University of New York revealed a global average of 10.4 plastic particles a litre. These particles were confirmed as plastic using an industry-standard infrared microscope. The tests also showed a much greater number of even smaller particles that researchers said are also likely plastic. The global average for these particles was 314.6 per litre. Samples came from 19 locations in nine countries on five continents. Some bottles had effectively zero plastic. One contained more than 10,000 particles a litre. We found plastic in 93% of the samples. “This is shocking,” said Erik Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Please name one human being on the entire planet who wants plastic in his or her bottle.” Peggy Apter certainly doesn’t. “It’s disheartening,” said Apter, a real estate investor in Carmel, Indiana, U.S., who drinks only bottled water. “What’s the world come to? Why can’t we have just clean, pure water?” Packaged water can be a lifeline for many of the 2.1 billion people worldwide with unsafe drinking water. Some 4,000 children die every day from water-borne diseases, according to the United Nations. Yet many who do have safe tap water still choose bottled because they think it’s cleaner, find it more convenient or prefer the taste. Bottled water output will soon hit 300 billion litres a year. Scientists and governments are increasingly concerned about microplastic pollution. Recent studies have found microplastic — particles smaller than 5 mm — in the oceans, soil, air, lakes, and rivers. But plastic’s final frontier may be the human body. Last year, Orb Media revealed microscopic plastic in global tap water samples. Today’s study is “a very illuminative example of how intimate our contact with plastic is,” said Martin Wagner, a toxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. What this means for human health is unknown. “Based on current knowledge, which is very fragmentary and incomplete, there is little health concern,” Mr. Wagner said. “The human body is well-adapted to dealing with non-digestible particles.” As much as 90% of microplastic that is consumed might be excreted, a 2016 European Union report on plastic in seafood said. Of the other 10%, some plastic under 150 microns (0.15 mm) could enter the gut’s lymphatic system, or pass from the bloodstream to the kidneys or liver, according the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. Today’s bottled water study found plastic within that range. But assumptions about how plastic behaves in the gut come from scientific models, not laboratory studies, Jane Muncke, managing director at the Food Packaging Forum, a Swiss research organisation, said. “We don’t even know all the chemicals in plastics,” Ms. Muncke said. “There’s so many unknowns here.” Bottled water manufacturers emphasised their products met all government requirements. Gerolsteiner, a German bottler, said its tests “have come up with a significantly lower quantity of microparticles per litre”, than found in Orb’s study. Nestle tested six bottles from three locations after an inquiry from Orb Media. Those tests, said Nestle Head of Quality Frederic de Bruyne, showed between zero and five plastic particles a litre. None of the other bottlers agreed to make public results of their tests for plastic contamination. “We stand by the safety of our bottled water products,” the American Beverage Association said in a statement. Anca Paduraru, a food safety spokeswoman for the European Commission, said that while microplastic is not directly regulated in bottled water, “legislation makes clear there must be no contaminants”. The U.S. doesn’t have rules for microplastic in food and beverages. Some consumers were shocked by Orb’s discovery. Others were confident plastic wouldn’t harm them. The study was supervised by Professor Sherri Mason, a leading microplastic researcher at the State University of New York in Fredonia. Mason also managed Orb’s 2017 tap water study. To test bottled water, Ms. Mason’s team first infused each bottle with a dye called Nile Red, an emerging method used by scientists for the rapid detection of microplastic. The water was then filtered to 1.5 microns, or 0.0015 mm — smaller than a human red blood cell. Under a microscope, in the blue glare of a crime-scene investigation light, and viewed through orange goggles, the dyed plastic particles on each filter glow like tiny embers. Ms. Mason analysed bigger particles, about 100 microns (0.1 mm), by Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy, which beams infrared light into an object to read its molecular signature. Polypropylene, used in bottle caps, made up 54% of those larger particles. Nylon was 16%. PET, used in bottles, was 6%. The majority of samples came in plastic bottles. Water in glass bottles also held microplastic. Fluorescing particles that were too small to be analysed by FTIR should be called “probable microplastic”, said Andrew Mayes, senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of East Anglia, because “some of it might be another, unknown, substance to which Nile Red stain is adhering.” Mr. Mayes developed the Nile Red method for identifying microplastic. Mr. De Bruyne, of Nestle, noted that Mason’s tests did not include a step in which biological substances are removed from the sample. Therefore, he said, some of the fluorescing particles could be false positives — natural material that the Nile Red had also stained. He didn’t specify what that material would be. Ms. Mason said the so-called “digestion step” is used on debris-filled samples from the ocean or the seashore, and wasn’t needed for bottled water. “Certainly they are not suggesting that pure, filtered, pristine water is likely to have wood, algae, or chitin [prawn shells] in it?” she said. To count the particles, we used an app that recorded the number of fluorescing objects in photographs of lab filters. “This is pretty substantial,” Mr. Mayes said. “I’ve looked in some detail at the finer points of the way the work was done, and I’m satisfied that it has been applied carefully and appropriately, in a way that I would have done it in my lab.” A recent paper in the journal Water Research reported finding microplastic in German mineral water. “I’m sure that this [plastic] is from the bottle itself,” lead author Darena Schymanski said. Orb’s studies of tap water and bottled water used different methods. But there is room to compare them. For microplastic around 100 microns, about the width of a hair, bottled water samples had nearly twice the particles per litre (10.4) as tap water (4.45). What’s best? So what’s best, bottled or tap? “If your tap water is of high quality, that’s always better,” said Scott Belcher, Professor of toxicology at North Carolina State University. “If you have contaminated and unsafe drinking water, bottled water may be your only alternative.” Echoing other consumers we interviewed, Ms. Apter said, “It’s the government’s responsibility to educate people to know what they’re drinking and eating.
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