A Single Litre Of Bottled Water May Harbor Around 2.4 Lakh Plastic Pieces, New Study Reveals

Do You Consume Bottled Water? Brace Yourself For A Revelation

Srinagar: A litre of bottled water could contain about 2.4 lakh plastic pieces on average, which is about 10 to 100 times greater than previous estimates that mainly concerned plastics of larger sizes, according to a new study.

While microplastics range from a micrometre -- a millionth of a metre -- to 5 millimetres, nanoplastics are smaller than a micrometre and are measured in billionths of a metre.

Researchers from Columbia University analysed three popular brands of bottled water sold in the US, measuring plastic particles down to 100 nanometres in size.

They detected about 1.1-3.7 lakh plastic fragments in each litre -- 90 per cent nanoplastics and the rest microplastics. Their findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences.

"Previously this was just a dark area, uncharted. Toxicity studies were just guessing what's in there," said study co-author Beizhan Yan, an environmental chemist at Columbia Climate School's LamontDoherty Earth Observatory.

"This opens a window where we can look into a world that was not exposed to us before," he said.

In recent years, microplastics have been documented to be present in soil, drinking water, food and even polar ice. Formed when larger plastics break down into progressively smaller bits, these plastics find their way into humans and other creatures, with potential effects on their health and ecosystem.

In this study, the team also determined the type of plastics they were, targeting seven common ones, along with charting their shapes for biomedical purposes.

They found a common one -polyethylene terephthalate or PET. Water bottles are made of this material.

Another type of plastic the researchers found was polyamide. A type of nylon, polyamide was found in greater quantity than PET. They said the