Heating just one food item in a plastic container creates more nanoplastic than a whole lifetime of drinking mineral water from plastic bottles

[Artemisia]

I used a glass pour-over when I drank coffee. Heat + plastic is not good. But then I worried about PFAS or whatever else like dioxin in the coffee filter.

 

[BrightCandle]

i wonder what this means for coffee makers, they are often made from plastic.

The Aeropress is done for, as are most of the pour over funnels based on this research. A lot of coffee machines use plastic for the filter and funnelling and on the carafe.

 

[Wishful]

I am not sure why the nanoplastic levels are so much higher than the microplastic levels in these plastic cups.

I'm picturing a plastic surface as being made up of many polymer chains linked and tangled, but also with many smaller chains not firmly attached. There would be some clumps of bound chains, which would be easily freed to become microparticles, while the individual chains would become nanoparticles. Heating a surface would flex some of those chains, releasing new particles. Environmental factors would constantly break off or expose new loosely-bound particles. Whether that picture matches reality is a different question.

It could be that researchers are using different measurement methods for these particles, which then results in wildly different particle number figures.

That's my guess too. With any new area of investigation, there's the problem of lack of standardization, both in methods and terminology. Two studies reporting nanoparticle counts might be comparing apples and jet turbines (ie. not even remotely close). That's why I'm thinking that the amounts found in that study will not be shockingly different from many other everyday exposures, once some standardization of measurements arrives.

What seems clear is that hot food or hot beverages in contact with plastic results in very high levels of plastic particle release, compared to other sources.

Not necessarily clear, since "those other sources" may not have been measured in a comparable way. Maybe wiping your mouth with a synthetic fibre cloth or drinking cold water from a new plastic cup releases a comparable number of particles as the microwaved items in the study. We'll have to wait for a proper study of everyday exposures.

 

[bad1080]

drinking cold water from a new plastic cup releases a comparable number of particles as the microwaved items in the study

why should that differ wildly from the water bottle figure?

 

[Wishful]

why should that differ wildly from the water bottle figure?

Pulling a plastic cup from a stack (typical way they're sold) might abrade fresh particles, while the blowing process might lock them in. I'm just saying that without proper measurements using the same technique and agreement on the definitions of micro and nano particles, we don't know what sort of exposures we're getting from different sources. There was a big gold mine scam due to the assay being done in a non-standard (but great for exciting headlines!) way.