[00:00] You might think that drinking from a glass bottle protects you from microplastics. But a recent study found something surprising. Drinks in glass bottles actually contained more microplastics than drinks in plastic
[00:14] bottles. For bottled water, the study found an average of 4.5 ± 1.2 microplastic particles per liter in glass bottles, compared to 1.6 ± 1.7 microplastic particles per liter in plastic bottles. Now the difference was larger for certain other beverages.
[00:28] in small glass bottles averaged 133.7 ± 15.9 particles per liter compared to 31.8 ± 17.3 particles per liter in cans. Now here's the weird part, it's not the glass that is leaking the
[00:40] microplastics. Researchers noticed that many of the microplastic particles were the same color as the paint on the metal bottle caps. When they analyzed them, their chemical composition also matched the caps' polyester-based paint. The researchers thought that the friction between
[00:53] the bottle caps and the bottle itself creates these tiny scratches and fragments that then lead some microplastics into the water itself. They even tested this experimentally. When they cleaned the caps before sealing the bottles, microplastic contamination dropped by roughly 70% compared to untreated caps.
[01:09] So glass bottles aren necessarily worse than plastic bottles The glass bottles still have a lot of advantages over plastic bottles The biggest one is that the glass bottle itself is more resistant to things like heat and sunlight that would break down microplastics inside a plastic bottle So if you have a plastic bottle sitting outside and the sun is going to melt a
[01:27] lot of the microplastics into the water, whereas if you have a glass bottle sitting out in the sun, then it's not going to happen nearly as much, probably not at all. So it's still in most cases better to drink water from a glass bottle than from a plastic bottle, because most bottle of
[01:41] water travels a lot of distances, it's exposed to more heat and sunlight during the travel. So during the travel, the glass bottle will have less microplastics leached into it through the sun and the heat. And that applies to the cans as well. Inside a tin can, there is a plastic layer
[01:56] that prevents the tin from leaking into the water, but the water is still sitting inside a plastic bag, basically. It's just covered outside with a tin layer. So even the tin layer is still better because the tin will protect the water against some of the sunlight. Out of all these options,
[02:09] the glass bottle is still the best. But still, microplastics are still part of a small picture when it comes to your overall health. You shouldn't get too scared of them, especially if you're still a little bit fat or if you have a low year to max, for example. Those are much bigger concerns.
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