In the study, scientists put the three plastic compounds into ‘hard water’ — a common type of U.S. freshwater that contains high levels of calcium carbonate and magnesium
When the plastic-containing water was boiled, these calcium carbonates formed tiny clumps around most of the microscopic plastics, trapping them within and rendering them harmless.
The report comes with significant caveats, however.
Scientists only looked at three of the most common — and in the case of polyethylene and polypropylenes, the safest — plastic polymers. They didn’t look at vinyl chloride, for example, a compound of serious concern last month’s study found in bottled water.
Boiling also didn’t manage to remove all of the polymers.
I wonder how effective the standard small filters are against microplastics? I had assumed they likely dealt with a lot of the problem already but I suspect a Zerowater big filter is very effective against microplastics given it removes all dissolved solids. It is at least a personal solution to reduce the impact of microplastics in drinking water but its not going to solve it coming in every food.
I wonder as well. My filter is made of plastic, and my water lines are plastic. Sometimes my cup is plastic. Do I get more micro plastics after the filtration process?
Of course, unreacted monomers are present in all plastic. It’s a question of how many and how harmful they are.
I was also thinking similar, does puttingan RO system for just the drinking water solve this?
Yes most definitely.
Micro plastics are defined as plastic sizes from 5mm down to 1.6 Microns.
A typical consumer grade RO can easily filter down to 0.001 Microns. Which not only removes micro plastics but almost all bacteria and viruses as well.