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Commercial tea bags release millions of microplastics, entering human intestinal cells
(medicalxpress.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
160 points (99.4% liked)
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Is there a way to tell whether teabags use these materials? It's not really something listed in the ingredients
I have bad news: even "non-plastic" tea bags have plastic fibres woven into the paper/cloth. These fibres allow the material to be sealed with heat. Best to use loose leaf and a strainer.
Source? For example the clipper website says they don’t use plastic, how do you know it still has plastic? https://www.clipper-teas.com/tea-talk/plastic-free-tea-bags/
Read that link carefully, there's a lot of flowery language but they do not say their bags are plastic-free.
There is also this page that says which tea brand don’t use plastics with sources to the announcement.
Unless they were talking about PLA plastics which from a (very) quick search seems to pose no risk
I have more bad news: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724007307](Are bioplastics safe? Hazardous effects of polylactic acid (PLA) nanoplastics in Drosophila)
Fixed the link for anyone who wanted to skim this study
thanks!
Your study is from 1/4/24 the one I linked is from 26/6/24
Or am I just being a muppet here?
Silly me. Glad that is resolved.
This is the summary blurb at the top of the article.
I would be very skeptical of ingesting something and believing it harmless if the study finds that it eventually breaks down in the environment, let alone it’s clearly funded by a company with ‘bioplastics’ in the company name.
National institute of health: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10389239/ If a company makes a claim that their bags are 100% plastic free, that is great. Just don't assume that paper bag = no plastic.
By the way: the clipper website says they use PLA, which is a plastic - just not a petroleum plastic. Its health effects are being investigated.