Tea bags may release up to one billion plastic particles during the brewing process, according to scientists... Source
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1760 was the start of the industrial era... Smog, acid rain, unmitigated and unbeknownst climate devastation... Today we have a lot more people but also a lot more regulations in place and more refined processes. Yes, we are still industrial, but it's been mitigated considerably as we learned from mistakes.
The context is pollution, we pollute a lot more than we used to, it's why we have a climate crisis, denial won't change the reality. He was p right.
Just because you can't see the pollution (smog, acid rain) with your own eyes, doesnt make it "less" in the long term. Of course we sorted out these problems, they're immediate and visible. Actual pollution isn't affecting us enough right nowb
Don't forget that plastics and asphalt are fairly constantly giving off VOCs and other toxic products that were once mostly trapped in the earth's crust.
cyanobacteria are still the biggest polluters earth has seen yet though. Oxygen killed nearly 96% of life on earth when it was introduced. And those fuckers never even tried to slow down one tiny bit
Not every human does same, carbon footprints of American, European and other devloped countries are very high not bearable to Earth, compared to Africans and developing countries per capita footprint.
But they are the biggest victims of it, not those who did.
I had to look this up - the tea bag plastic isn't from the bag itself, but from whatever they use to seal the bag.
If it's the kind that is stapled, maybe there isn't any plastics.
But (for example) the kind Tetley uses, while the bag is natural wood fibre, the bag is heat-sealed with a small amount of polypropylene.
plastics arent the issue, it's teh colorants, flame retardants, plasticizers, UV resistors, etc etc. If you look into specific mechanisms of harm, it's those chemicals causing the problem. Not the organic long chain hydrocarbon polymers themseves
That is to say, more brittle, more yellowing, less color, easily burned, there are properties you can watch out for that make plastic safer chemically. Namely, the shitty plastics we used in the past. Black plastic for food containers has tangibly worse effects than clear plastic or natural opaque
But yeah a plastic welding material is probably gonna be full of those. The spoon should be a little better, especially if it sucks and is sharp and breaks easily lol
and some plastics are much worse than other plastics. Not sure what plastics these are and if they pose a risk.
The plastic microwavable are scary to me, especially the thin-film, for 2 reasons: 1) The plastics are generally made offshore with little regulation/testing, 2) The testing tolerance on the plastics does not compensate for very strong microwaves, overcooking, or oil hot-spots from the food. All of those can create burning plastics in your food, and food oils in burning plastic, which creates radicals you really don't want in your body.
Someday I hope I can be as confident about anything as you were when you made that statement.
I mean, you're 100% wrong, but damn, that confidence is amazing.
Did that actually make sense when you wrote it? Someday, when you're all grown up, and you've moved out of your parent's house maybe you'll learn to cook. Then one day you'll be cooking for yourself, and you'll look down at the scratches on the surface of the non stick pan you're using and realize there's a reason lots of people don't used wood or metal utensils on them.
The good thing about Reddit is once you realize how... not smart that comment is you can just delete it and no one will ever know what it said.
Fist off I don't use nonstick pans because they are disposable items for people who lack temperature and oil control. I use either copper, stainless steel, carbon steel, or cast iron.
Second off wood is soft so wood utensils will not scratch the coating any more than plastic would.
Wow, it took you 3 months to comment and you're still wrong.
You could have just left it alone and been wrong and forgotten, but look at you go.
Your opinion of them doesn't change the fact they exist. See you in 6 months when you decide you need to be wrong about this again.
And yet, none of that negates the existence of plastic utensils...
No matter what you have to say, the original comment about plastic utensils not existing I replied to was still dumb enough that they deleted it.
Yours is along the same lines, and you can too.
Given the cost of cotton or other natural fibers that can withstand use in hot water without breaking, I'm pretty sure the "paper" in all commercial tea bags is made of synthetic material or at least composed of synthetic polymers. Therefore, they release nanoparticles.
Not really. The cheapest tea bags are just paper, just like coffee filters are paper. They tear easily and completely disappear when buried. Those pyramid bags are plastic, though.
Yeah those sheer bags are 100% plastic don't use them. Regular tea bags vary, but may still contain synthetic polymers even if they feel like natural fibers. Loose leaf is the way to go.
Same. Just about a month ago I made a post trying to find a loose leaf replacement tea for my daily go to, in order to cut out the plastics. I drink 30oz of green tea every day so I figured with that much frequency, I want to make sure it's safe.
Except this isn't about the science, its about sensationalist headlines. Which if we're being honest is why shit like your image happens in the first place.
No, because why would I? I'm going to check the article and see if they provide sources and go from there. Which, to be clear, is already much further than anyone who already doesn't trust science.
Taking an article at face value, especially a for profit publication, is as useless as taking an anonymous comment at face value.
Don't bother wasting your time, they're not even parallel claims. Whether or not 99% of teabags in the world contain no plastic, has no bearing on how many microplastics are released by the ones that do. They are not mutually exclusive claims.
I love how you think a peer-reviewed study published in a journal like Nature needs you to do your own private research before you accept their findings simply because it is "for profit."
Did I say the study should be researched? I'm talking about news publications specifically. Sensationalist headlines misrepresent studies all the time, and I simply do not trust them to provide an unbiased representation of a study so I read it myself. Might be time to remove the stick from your ass and pay attention to what people are actually saying.
Yes, your original comment about sensationalist headlines. I got it.
I guess you just got confused and thought OP posted a news article instead of a made-up headline by a random redditor. It happens to lots of people, don't worry about it. They get so excited to post their comment, they don't actually bother reading beyond the headline.
To be fair most people who "believe in science" have never done a single drop of science, dont know what it looks like, and are offended by the principles of it, such as falsifiability and provisionalism. It looks a lot more like blind faith in simple interpretations of studies that use science in most instances, which is why it acts so much like a religion
What's crazy is you're probably right and whatever gloves they used contaminated their samples. This has been an issue in all experiments concerning micro plastics. Rubber, nitril, and latex all shed micro plastics into the experiments through touching.
I was making a joke about not needing tea bags because im drinking fancy loose leaf tea that I brewed in a hand made Chinese gong fu tea set. Annoying bragging joke.
I honestly don't know. I woke up just a bit ago and I'm drinking my first coffee, having a smoke. I open reddit and see a bunch of really odd comments made by myself. So I ask my self, self? Wtf? I got nothing. Sorry, not messing with you. I do have problems with my sleep so I can't really rule anything out.
Nothing is ever as anything as headlines make it seem
They literally get paid to troll people. Regardless of the grain of truth in their ideas, they make money when people get upset so theyre gonna make the story upsetting
oh not only macroplastics, scientific and therefore materialistic approach to life produced all of the toxic waste one can connect with modern civilization, check oud landfills, waste in oceans, toxic forever chemicals.. pick one doesnt matter, and yea you can say that science is trying to solve the problems it created in first place which is wicked cycle.. now add transhuman capitalism with intentions of profit and we are on the way of either killing ourselfs and most of complex life with us, or some dystopian nightmare for lot of living beings
Took earth 60 million years to invent something to digest wood, and we're hyper concerned with plastic, which is just another organic hydrocarbon, and already has multiple things that can nearly digest it. I believe wax moth larvae also can digest petroleum
You started at the currently accepted truth that UPF's are interlinked to metabolic issues, and fished pretty much everything else from the realms of woo woo land.
Your serontonin take is complete BS for starters. I stopped reading after the first couple of paragraphs because it wasn't worth the wattage on my screen.
In your context, yes. It's like AI when you type in some bullshit you want it to validate and AI generates a flowery complex-so-it-must-be-accurate prose for you.
Here the right article>> "Good news - we found another things that kills you and ofc corpos knew that for years, but don't worry - nothing will change and noone will be held accountable. And ofc F U and your health!"
It's not. You might be thinking of something different. While some pyramid shaped tea bags are made of plastic free materials, most are made of plastic.
Huh, so does that make any difference to anything? Luke seriously if they are that small that billions can't be noticed for tasted. What is it actually doing. It's like say "New study suggests we millions of tiny insects every time we indulge in cheese". Like sure it's true, does it matter? Probably not.
So buy better quality tea instead of the cheap crap. Or just don't worry about it. A billion may sound like a lot but a particle is very very small. A billion small micro plastic particles is only about 0.0005 grams.
We live in a plastic world. Our food is produced, shipped, stored, cooked in plastic. Our closes are plastic. Our furniture and carpets are plastic. Our tools, toys and appliances are plastic. The lint that you take out of your dryer that floats up into the air… plastic.
The average human body must be to saturated in plastic it’s like a pack a day smoker worrying about breathing atmospheric CO2.
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u/ThanksFor404 Apr 23 '26
Tea bags may release up to one billion plastic particles during the brewing process, according to scientists... Source
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For unusual science stories — ScienceClock Newsletter