Beware: Your Water Bottle Could Be Teeming with Plastic Particles

Those ubiquitous plastic water bottles are convenient, but are they safe? Perhaps not.

Background: Ordinary tap water has already been shown to be contaminated, for unknown reasons, with plastic microparticles, and researchers from the State University of New York in Fredonia wanted to determine whether plastic was contaminating bottled water, too.

To find out, the researchers collected bottled water from 11 different brands sold in nine different countries (the US, Indonesia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Brazil, Lebanon, Thailand and China). The researchers added a special dye, Nile Red, that attaches to the surface of extremely small plastic particles and can be detected with special cameras. The bottled water brands tested were Aqua, Aquafina, Bisleri, Dasani, E-Pura, Evian, Gerolsteiner, Minalba, Nestle Pure Life, San Pelligrino and Wahaha.

Study results: 93% of the tested samples contained plastic particles. Only 17 of the 259 bottles tested showed no plastic particles, while one bottle showed more than 10,000 microplastic particles per liter. On average, the lab counted 325 microplastic particles per liter of water being sold.

The most commonly identified material was polypropylene, which is used to make the bottle caps on bottled water. This finding suggests that the plastic particles may enter the bottled water during the bottling process or possibly when breaking off the cap or pouring the water out of the bottle.

To be fair, plastic particles are everywhere—even in the laboratory equipment that was used for this experiment. But the bottled water tested contained, on average, more than twice as many plastic particles measuring at least 100 micrometers in size than the number found when these researchers previously tested tap water.

While the health implications of ingesting microplastic particles are not fully understood, it is believed that the particles may have the ability to cross the gastrointestinal tract and enter other parts of the body.

In fact, after the release of this research, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it would be reviewing possible health risks associated with drinking water that contains plastic particles.

Bottom line: Skip bottled water, along with any other beverages from plastic bottles or with plastic caps. When looking for a portable water source, opt for a stainless steel container.

Editor’s note: Read here for details on another contaminant that can be found in tap water.