Almost all bottled water is laced with micro-plastics, contamination that’s going straight into your life-sustaining infrastructure. Fun!
And not even indirectly. New research suggests that anyone who has ever enjoyed a disposable bottle of water has directly ingested plastic particles small enough to pollute your bodily organs.
The kind of widespread plastic pollution that pervades the planet today is unlike anything this world has ever known. This globally popular petroleum product has impregnated every aspect of life on Earth — littering the land, poisoning rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, choking out sea turtles, asphyxiating pelicans and penetrating each and every level of the food chain from plankton all the way up to predators like sharks
Even people.
The recent study, funded and published by the non-profit journalist group Orb Media, found that 93 percent of several big commercial brands of bottled water were contaminated with microscopic particles of plastic. The study examined 11 of the world’s biggest bottled water businesses and found a worldwide average of 314.6 plastic particles per liter of water.
To give you an idea of the spread: the Italian company San Pellegrino had the lowest number of plastic particles in its water, with only 74 particles per liter. Whereas an American company, Nestlé, had the highest number of plastic particles in their water, at 10,390 particles per liter!
Either way, you’re pumping microscopic pieces of plastic into your body. And you’re likely paying a premium price to do it.
But how did all that plastic get there? Bottled water is supposed to be pure and fresh and contamination free. It’s supposed to offer people a safer, healthier alternative to tap water.
Well, not really. Because, a lot of top bottled water brands (like Nestlé) aren’t selling spring water — it's simply tap water in plastic bottles. The research suggests that, much of this plastic contamination comes from water treatment plants that are not designed to filter out micro-plastics that come from sources like hygiene products. So, when Nestlé fills up its Dasani bottles with that publicly treated tap water, they bottle the particles in with it.
That water ends up on shelves around the world. And even though it looks clear and clean to the naked eye, it’s packed with plastic.
This information might trouble some out there. Our understanding of micro-plastics and how the body interacts with them is still pretty rudimentary. After all, this is an extremely new and modern health concern. There isn’t a whole lot of data to pull on the toxicity level of micro-plastics; we just haven’t been exposed to the issue long enough.
Yet.
Don’t start writing a will, though. Because, according to some health professionals, our bodyies might be more than capable of safely digesting these micro-plastics. Martin Wagner, a toxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told the Compton Herald that (concerning micro-plastics in bottled water) he doesn’t think there’s much to be worried about.
“I believe that our body is very well-adapted in dealing with those non-digestible particles,” said Wagner.
All the same, the idea of drinking water tainted with microscopic plastic particles doesn’t sit well. It is unnatural. And it just seems like an unhealthy habit to maintain.
But, so long as no one’s been poisoned, this problem is only going to get worse. What incentive do companies like Nestlé have to clean up their act and start selling water that’s plastic particle free? That would be expensive to do. It would also be environmentally, and socially responsible.
And companies like that aren’t in the business of acting responsibly. So long as they can all keep selling shmucks bottled tap water laced with petroleum products, they’re going to keep right on doing it.
So, in the end, human beings and the planet itself will suffer the same fate; a nasty future of internal contamination and plastic pollution.
Karma can be a real bitch.
Leave a Reply