With the recent news about scientists detecting billions of microparticles and nanoparticles of plastic in a basic bottle of water, I’m left wondering: (a) if these tiny particles of plastic are also found in municipal drinking water and (b) whether a plastic filter actually removes these plastic microparticles without adding its own particles to the purified water. For reference, our refrigerator filter isn’t a high-end unit that removes a long list of chemical impurities. Instead, it removes sediment and chlorine. Also, our drinking water originates from a treatment facility located next to a river in the Mid-Atlantic, which is then conveyed to our city by plastic pipes, then brought into our small community by plastic pipes, then delivered to our house by smaller plastic pipes, then distributed throughout our house by CPVC plastic pipes, then stored in a plastic reservoir in our refrigerator after being run through a plastic filtration device. That’s a lot of plastic.
A cite to this supposed news would be helpful.
I find this an interesting topic myself and have read a few articles in Consumer Reports but lack a subscription to research it.
National Academy of Sciences: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
NIH: Plastic particles in bottled water | National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Apparently, plastic water bottles shed micro/nano particles like crazy, but the testing procedure utilized (“a new SRS approach to detect micro- and nanoplastics at the single-particle level”) is so new in this application that it’s unknown whether these micro/nano particles will also be found in plastic bottles for soft drinks and sports drinks – or if plastic municipal and residential plumbing pipes also shed micro/nano plastics.
I guess one of the ways to avoid drinking nanoplastics might be by drinking from glass bottles that are filtered out to the extreme in a plant. I’m thinking maybe about juice, tea or beer.
I’ll bet the advertiser thought I would write drinking bleach too.
I believe this question will go unanswered until the sophisticated technology needed to evaluate micro/nanoplastic contamination is available to cities and even consumers. That said, given the long journey much of the nation’s drinking water takes through a labyrinth of plastic pipes, by the time the water reaches your glass in your kitchen, it could be loaded with microplastics. Time will tell. I doubt the smaller manufacturers of water filters have this sophisticated technology in their testing arsenals.