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Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

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Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#251

Post by mastazi »

thelittleone wrote: post #222
mastazi wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Bali, Thailand and many other places in SE Asia, you can get water that comes from local treatment plants (it usually looks like this[1]) instead of "brand" bottled water (like these ones[2]), the former is almost always bottled locally (at the nearest water treatment plant, they are ubiquitous in SE Asia even in regional areas, sometimes they are subsidised by governments), as a result the water tends to stay in…

There’s also a system where Nestle gallon containers are filled by small merchants with local filtered bore water and recapped and sold (often as original).

In many places in SE Asia, Nestle "gallon containers" are sold at a premium compared to locally purified water (often 3X - 4X the price), but I would be curious to see side-by-side water analysis results...

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#252

Post by 40four »

ryanmercer wrote: post #40
40four wrote: post #33

I was curious if the micro-plastics could be coming from the bottles they are packaged in. The article says... It's not clear how the plastic is getting into the bottled water — whether it's the water source itself or the air or the manufacturing and bottling process. "Even the simple act of opening the cap could cause plastic to be chipping off the cap," Mason said. I think it's easy to assume it's from the water so…

Probably all of the above. We know microplastics are in the air, we know they are in aquifers, we know any plastic material municipal water is going through could result in micro plastic contamination just from wear, potentially from the filters they are running the water through before bottling and any plastic fittings or piping on that fill the bottles. It's wholly plausible it's a contamination of any/all of them…

It's crazy that micro-plastics are even in the air. Gross!

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#254

Post by cordite »

smhost wrote: post #181
lukaa wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For practical purpose does it matter? It detects non-water particles(pollution) in twice higher ratio than in tap water and plastic bottled water is sold as way purer than tap water with 1000 time higher price. Basically it's scam.

we should start calling bottled water "plastic water"

Is microplastics what give cheap water bottles that particular off-flavor?

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#255

Post by davchana »

nomel wrote: post #211
cortesoft wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic bottled water is not bought because it is higher quality. People buy it because it comes in a disposable container.

I buy 2.5 gallon plastic jugs of water from the store. It tastes much better than the many "fill" services/stations around the city that exist because this cities water tastes absolutely terrible, and that's what they're filtering.

Same, Arrowhead Brand water tastes better than any other local or other water, & my wife wants that water only. I myself couldn't care less about brand.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#256

Post by quaice »

Judgmentality wrote: post #246
mehrdadn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about purity but the taste can indeed be better than tap.

It can also be worse. I'd guess for almost everybody the difference in taste is dominated by the placebo effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJEw5aDzOo

Guess away.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#257

Post by zaroth »

groby_b wrote: post #178
zaroth wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get 63 million? The third link from GP has a headline which reads “360,000 Californians have unsafe drinking water. Are you one of them?” That’s approximately 1% of CA’s population. That’s not even a long tail.

The second link.

> As many as 63 million people — nearly a fifth of the United States — from rural central California to the boroughs of New York City, were exposed to potentially unsafe water more than once during the past decade, according to a News21 investigation of 680,000 water quality and monitoring violations from the Environmental Protection Agency.

So I believe what’s happening here is that they took the total population coverage of any water district that ever had at least two reports of a water quality or monitoring violation in the last decade.

I think ”potentially” is the key word here which makes this claim particularly washy. Are they looking at violations which actually resulted in measurably unsafe water, which were likely to cause or result in unsafe water, or merely violations which could possibly resulted in unsafe water, or perhaps monitoring lapses which would have failed to detect potentially unsafe water, but without any evidence that water was actually ever unsafe?

It’s a newsroom investigative report, not a scientific study. Take this with a huge grain of salt.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#258

Post by dual_basis »

fingerlocks wrote: post #235
JohnFen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tap water in the vast majority of the US is superior to bottled water. There are exceptions, though, so if health is your concern, you might want to test both your tap and bottled water.

> The tap water in the vast majority of the US is superior to bottled water. I'm surprised this myth gets repeated so often on HN. It's not true- the standards for purified bottled water are quite high[0]. [0] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/bottled-water...

1. The link you provided suggests that some bottled water comes from Municipal sources, ie. it is tap water. This would logically imply that the standards for bottled water are 2. The original article you are commenting on suggests that bottled water contains more microplastics than tap water.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#259

Post by ninth_ant »

Judgmentality wrote: post #246
mehrdadn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about purity but the taste can indeed be better than tap.

It can also be worse. I'd guess for almost everybody the difference in taste is dominated by the placebo effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJEw5aDzOo

It would be silly to draw global conclusions based on one “test” that was setup for maximum effect on television.

I’ve lived in places with tap water that is definitely noticeable vs filtered/treated water. San Jose water for example is extremely hard and I suspect few people would mistake it for bottled.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#260

Post by _jal »

groby_b wrote: post #62
slowmovintarget wrote: post #25

Went looking to see what the comparison to tap water was: > Orb found on average there were 10.4 particles of plastic per litre that were 100 microns (0.10 mm) or bigger. This is double the level of microplastics in the tap water tested from more than a dozen countries across five continents, examined in a 2017 study by Orb that looked at similar-sized plastics. Worse... it's worse than tap water.

Well, for microplastics. If you live e.g. in the Bay Area, your tap water instead has a good chance of having a good helping of hexavalent chromium[1], which... not too healthy. (Neither are arsenic, bromium, etc.) Pick your poison. Literally. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tap-water-Bay-Area-datab...

If you want to actually look up your local results from the source of that article,

https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/

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