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August 19th, 2024
The world has a microplastics problem that can feel overwhelming. Microplastics are those tiny specks of plastic that allow them to worm their way into everything from our food, to our salt, to our drinking water, and inevitably into our bodies. In 2022, researchers detected microplastics in human blood. This year scientists tested 62 human placentas and found microplastics in every single one. It seems like every month more and more discoveries are being made into the insidious nature of microplastics contamination.
New research offers a bit of hope however. A study recently published in the Environmental Science & Technology Letters journal suggests that boiling and filtering tap water can remove many of these microplastics, making it cleaner and safer to drink. The study involved samples of tap water taken from a city northwest of Hong Kong, “spiked” with different levels of microplastics including those derived from styrofoam, polyethylene (the most commonly produced plastic), and polypropylene (the second most-used plastic). Researchers boiled the contaminated samples for 5 minutes, let them for 10 minutes, and then ran them through a nylon filter.
Researchers expected that the boiling process would harden the calcium in the water into limescale, which occurred. But surprisingly, the microplastics became trapped inside the limescale, allowing them to be caught in a filter and removed from the water. In hard water, which contains a lot more calcium than soft water, this method resulted in a microplastics reduction of up to 90%. For soft water, the results were still significant at 25%. A simple coffee filter will do the trick too.
While much work remains to be done globally to reduce our exposure to microplastics, this filtration method does offer some promise that we might be able to lower exposure in the short term with methods available to us right now.
