(NewsNation) — Researchers have discovered bottled water can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated.
Scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty laboratory found nanoplastics a 1,000th the average width of human hair. These particles are so small they can migrate through the tissues of the digestive tract or the lungs into the bloodstream.
One liter of bottled water contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastic. 90% of these were identified as nanoplastics and the rest were classified as microplastics, according to the new study.
The study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined water samples from three popular brands but didn’t identify which ones.
“For a long time before this study, I actually thought that what was inside bottled water (in terms of) nanoplastics was just a few hundred PET particles,” said Naixin Qian, a Columbia chemistry graduate student and the study’s lead author. “It turns out to be much more than that.”
PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a type of clear plastic that is commonly used for single-use water bottles.
Research on the impacts of nanoplastics on human health is still sparse but research on its impact on other animals suggests a strong negative influence.
In laboratory studies of fish and rodents, microplastics were shown to interfere with development, reproductive ability and health, gut health, hormone levels, immune responses, the heart and more.