by The bottled water industry has pushed back against recent findings from Columbia University that their product contains hundreds of thousands of potentially dangerous “nanoplastics” – plastic particles small enough to enter human cells .
In a statement to The Hill, an industry trade association urged people to keep calm (and continue drinking bottled water) while scientists develop a more thorough understanding of these plastics and their effects on the human body.
“Media reports about these particles in drinking water do nothing more than unnecessarily scare consumers,” said the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA).
The IBWA was responding to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which found that there are nearly 250,000 nanoplastic particles in an average water bottle.
The researchers determined this by using a laser to identify plastic particles smaller than those previously detectable. These results extended scientists’ ability to identify plastic fragments to the previously uncharted nanoscale – made of fragments measurable in billionths of a meter, or about the size of a virus.
The IBWA pointed out that these methods were novel – and the field of nanoplastic toxicology is in its infancy – to warn consumers not to ignore the results.
“There is currently a lack of standardized methods and no scientific consensus regarding the potential health consequences of nanoplastic and microplastic particles,” he wrote.
The IBWA noted the findings of the World Health Organization (WHO) which found that the evidence was too sparse to draw firm conclusions about the health consequences of nanoplastics in the environment – and identified the nanoscale as an extremely urgent priority .
In the IBWA’s account, these WHO findings were less cause for concern. The health organization found that, due to that lack of research, “no adverse health effects could be drawn” from eating or drinking foods and drinks contaminated with micro and nanoplastics, the trade association said.
He also cited studies that failed to find a clear threshold for safe exposure to microplastics or nanoplastics, and an op-ed from a German government chemist that encouraged “scientists and ideally journalists. [to] cast a critical eye on applied methods before trusting the results of studies.”
However, it was the same lack of information shown by these sources regarding the level of nanoplastics consumed by humans and whether they are harmful that the PNAS study itself sought to resolve.
The truth of science is also the belief that lack of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Thus, the WHO report’s caveat about limited data comes with many warnings about potential harm from nanoplastic and microplastic (NMP) pollution.
The WHO has raised concerns about the direct effects of such pollution on the human body, and the possibility that toxic microorganisms can form “biofilms” on plastic particles, and ride them into the body to cause inflammation and wider infection. create.
“The possibility of enrichment of antimicrobial-resistant genes in MP-associated biofilms and the role of NMP as vectors for pathogens and chemicals should be further studied,” the WHO wrote.
In calling for more research, the WHO has made it clear that it considers plastic pollution to be a serious problem made worse, not better, by the lack of evidence – and one that the global community wants to see fixed.
“Although the limited data do not provide much evidence that NMP has adverse effects on humans, there is a growing public awareness and consensus among all stakeholders that plastics do not belong in the environment,” the WHO wrote.
On one key point, however, the IBWA, the WHO, the Columbia team and other scientific sources were in agreement: that bottled water was far from the only source of plastic pollution entering the human body.
Barbara Ossmann, a German government scientist, warned in her editorial that micro- and nanoplastics were found in water not because they are necessarily more widespread there, but because their level in water is relatively easy to study.
The PNAS study, for example, identified the nanoplastics collected by pouring bottled water through an extremely fine filter and using its laser imaging tools on the millions of fragments the researchers captured – which is much more difficult to do with a hamburger or a pound of human tissue.
The IBWA argued that the bottled water industry is unfairly disadvantaged in relation to this study.
Precisely because it is so easy to check the bottled water industry’s product for nanoplastics, the trade association argues that consumers may be getting the wrong impression that potentially toxic compounds are more widespread than in places another.
“Bottled water is just one of thousands of food and drink products packaged in plastic containers,” the IBWA wrote.
“Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, nano- and microplastic particles are found in all aspects of our environment – soil, air and water.”
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