Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

301–310 of 383 posts

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

#302
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distilled water, particularly if heated, is dangerous to drink, according to some chemists I know. The concept is that the ultra-pure water leaches potentially harmful ions from its surroundings, for example chromium from stainless steel fixtures. Better to drink some harmless sodium and chlorine ions.

What's their take on reverse osmosis?

Reverse osmosis devices include mineralization filters, which add salts to nearly-distilled water.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have your sign reversed on that inequality? If the water comes from municipal sources, and the standards are higher for bottled water than tap (clearly stated in the link), then the quality of bottled water can be, at worst, equal to tap water.

Unless impurities are introduced at the bottling plant, or with the plastic bottles.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That video is just a lot more fun than a traditional study, but here you go:

https://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2018/...

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of bottled water comes from municipal water plants (aka tap water). That Penn & Teller YouTube link even has a section showing this, though you only need to go to the supermarket and look closely at the fine print of all the different brands of bottle water. You'll quickly find a lot are tap water.

I was just in the US and I couldn't drink the bottled water, basically, due to it tasting terrible. The San Francisco tap water was surprisingly good when filtered, and I did find a brand called "Iceland Spring" or something similar that was good. Evian also has a consistently good taste.

That’s weird, I find Evian awful in every country I go to :)

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

#306
post #300

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.

For the majority of the population of South America, it is bought because the tap water is not potable. I imagine that is the case in other continents as well.

Africa, Asia too

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

#307

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.

This isn't true in my experience. I've witnessed plenty of people in wealthy US suburbs that stock bottled water at home and even stock up on vacation. They claim it's for the taste and purity.

> They claim it's for the taste and purity.

Then they aren't very bright.

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

#308
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…

Someone could test this:

- Measure bottle water microplastic contents.

- Measure tap water microplastic contents.

- Put tap water in bottles and graph amount of microplastics vs days. If you want to measure e.g. 10 days, fill and leave 10 * N bottles resting, then open and measure N bottles everyday.

- If it can be demonstrated that the plastics come from the bottle, repeat with other batches where every day the bottles are shaken vs still, or under the sun vs shadow, etc. to see what affects them the most.

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

#309
post #260
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

And what exactly can one do if the results are terrible?

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, I can confirm that our water is extremely clean and good to drink. Additionally our city was rated one of the best tasting tap waters for all of Ontario, cities literally compete for quality water. Contrast that to Flint michigan across the river from me.

Dude not a fair comparison, here in Canada there's probably the best tap water in the world ;)

Iceland was the best i've ever had
Post reply on HN