Alba García-Rodriguez, a microbiologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, says: “We were able to identify these contaminations with new and advanced methods. “This is an important tool to advance research on the impact of these pollutants on human health.”
Previous research has warned that tea bags may contain artificial particles that are harmful to health. In this research, scientists tried to examine this issue more carefully and used tea bags available in the market. By using laser techniques to measure the speed and scattering of light, a very accurate picture of the chemical and physical properties of the particles released from tea bags was obtained.
Three types of tea bags were tested. The tea bags, which were mainly made of polypropylene, released about 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average particle size of about 136.7 nm. Cellulose tea bags released an average of 135 million particles per milliliter, each about 244 nanometers in size. Nylon-6 tea bags typically released 8.18 million particles per milliliter, each about 138.4 nanometers in size.
The researchers also investigated how microplastic and nanoplastic particles interact with human intestinal cells. In mucus-producing cells, the amount of absorption was such that the plastics could reach the cell nucleus. This discovery is useful for understanding the impact of plastics on human health that are now moving through our bodies.
The researchers wrote in their article: “The composition of plastic materials in micro and nanoplastics has a great impact on how they interact with the body and causes these plastics to affect organs, tissues and cells differently. These differences can cause plastics to accumulate in the body in certain patterns and have different effects.”
