When taking a sip of water can be hazardous

Hydration, hydration, hydration — one of the most-emphasized health tips of our contemporary age is the advice to drink water. Remain hydrated. For many, that means carrying a water bottle along for the day, whether simply to work or for fun.

For many planet-conscious people, that water bottle is reusable. By refilling a reusable container, people can eliminate the plastic waste that comes with purchasing water one bottle at a time. But if the necessity to reduce plastic waste won’t persuade a person to stop buying bottled water, science just uncovered an unsettling reason to break the throwaway bottle habit.

Researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers University found some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments in a typical liter of bottled water.

About 10% if the detected plastics were microplastic, with the other 90% nano-plastics. Their study, published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed how such minute particles are swallowed, only to enter the brain, cells and bloodstream. To track the elusive nanoplastics, researchers used a refined spectrometry method to count and identify the tiny particles.

With every swig of water, microplastics and nanoplastics are following into the body. (Microplastics are between 5 millimeters and 1 micrometer; nanoplastics are less than 1 micrometer in size; neither is visible to the human eye.) These minute particles then lodge themselves throughout the body. While it’s hardly a secret plastic particles can be found in bottled water, the concentrations are 10 to 100 times more than previously estimated.

It’s estimated that in the United States alone, Americans buy 50 billion water bottles a year — bottled water sales have been growing in the U.S. since the 1970s, when Perrier arrived. Americans now are drinking more bottled water than soft drinks such as Coke or Pepsi.

The flip side of what is a welcome trend — water is better than a sugary drink — is that Americans are ingesting more microand nanoplastics. And it’s in most bottles people are purchasing. Even before scientists could reliably measure nanoplastics, a 2018 study on behalf of nonprofit Orb Media found 93% of bottled water contains microplastics. Bottled water also was found to have about 50% more microplastics than tap water, according to researchers, who examined 11 different brands of water purchases in nine countries.

All of this plastic flowing to organs throughout the body and to landfills across the country is unhealthy for both human and planet. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates only about 8.4% of plastic in the U.S. was recycled in 2017; plastics, as most people know, take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose. It never vanishes; it becomes smaller and smaller. For humans, the chemical additives and pollutants in plastic can cause disease, with science showing links to cancer and disruptions of the endocrine system. For the planet, the spread of plastics can pollute land and waterways. Plastics have been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 36,000 feet below sea level. They are ubiquitous.

So ubiquitous there is little the average human can do to reduce exposure to potentially harmful chemicals. One positive step, though, would be to stop drinking water from single-use plastic bottles.