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Tea bags releasing 'millions' of microplastics into tea, study shows (www.dpa-international.com)

submitted 1 week ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/news@beehaw.org

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/52242140

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[–] splinter@lemm.ee 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This study is unscientific garbage and should be retracted.

Their “simulation” of making tea involved 300 teabags boiled in 600ml of water at 95 C while being stirred at 750rpm for an unspecified amount of time. They then took counts using undiluted samples of that liquid.

It isn’t clear why they chose such an absurd methodology, but it is absolutely spurious to draw conclusions from this about teabags used under normal conditions.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This was published in the same journal that published the black plastic study that had a huge math error. Also seem to have problems with conflicts of interest and studies changing authors immediately prior to publication. Dubious at best

[–] splinter@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago

Good point. This journal was just delisted from Clarivate because of integrity violations as well.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 7 points 6 days ago

That's basically blending it...

That said, we do know that water bottles sitting in the sun (i.e. heat + UV) causes leeching so I wonder about things like soda cans (not just the bottles). I would imagine that with tea bags with plastic present, boiling it and steeping for a few minutes would likely result in some contamination.

Which really makes one wonder... just why would you include plastic in something that will be ingested.