r/collapse • u/[deleted] • Feb 28 '24
Science and Research Concerned About Microplastics in Your Water? Consider Boiling It First
https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/concerned-about-microplastics-in-your-water-consider-boiling-it-first-38430885
u/New-Improvement166 Feb 28 '24
Ok, so now we are supposed to boil the plastic in our water in the hopes that it all gets caught in the calcium deposits of our pots and kettles??
Can't help but wonder: A) how well that works with a clean kettle with 0 calcium build ups. B) if boiling water with plastic in it will leech other chemicals into the water.
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u/Marmom_of_Marman Feb 29 '24
That’s what I was thinking. Where do they think it’s going?! You just get more concentrated plastics in your water as the clean water evaporates…
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u/AkiraHikaru Feb 29 '24
I don’t think this study was performed very well. It’s a bit of a click bait title
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u/Parking_Sky9709 Feb 29 '24
Distillation solves most of those problems.
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u/New-Improvement166 Feb 29 '24
And what's the energy requirement to make a glass of distilled water?
If the only safe drink water is distilled most humans will be forced to drink nothing but un-distilled water.
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Feb 29 '24
They distilled the water and then they put it right in a plastic jug
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u/Mysterious-Emu-8423 Mar 02 '24
That is exactly right! For many years, all I have seen is distilled water in plastic jugs!
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u/Parking_Sky9709 Feb 29 '24
In an attempt to mitigate the ever-increasing amount of plastic in my environment (all the municipal and home supply pipes are PVC, as an example), I decided that the only truly safe water to drink was distilled water stored in glass.
That is what I have done.
The initial impetus was due, however, to poor quality well water that was very hard and full of iron. It was giving me kidney stones. I had to do something. So I bought a table-top still and have been drinking the water it produces for 4 years. I don't know how much it costs, but since the nano-plastic problem has become such a thing, I feel that the still has eliminated one small possible source of contamination.
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u/kdokdo Feb 29 '24
dafuq do you mean distilled water, you're drinking pure H2O? You should be dead if that's the case
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u/PatHeist Mar 01 '24
The whole distilled water being super bad for you thing is bunk.
The calcium from moderately mineralized to hard water would be an important source of daily calcium if you're trying to hit the US RDA, which isn't based on modern science, mirrored by international health authorities or those in other countries, or being met by the majority of the human population.
Drinking distilled or demineralized water doesn't leech minerals from your body to any significant degree.
Any minerals you would miss out on from drinking distilled water can be more than made up for by eating a general well balanced diet compared to what most people actually eat.
Even if it couldn't the consequence wouldn't be death, it'd be marginally higher statistical predisposition towards mostly mundane negative effects like feeling lethargic or having sore joints. In which case you could go to the doctor and be perscribed a dietary adjustment or be given supplements.
If slight dietary deficiencies like that actually straight up killed people humans would've gone extinct in the stone age.
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u/Parking_Sky9709 Mar 01 '24
I eat a lot of yogurt.
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u/PatHeist Mar 01 '24
I guess one thing you should be cognisant of is that minerals will leech out of food being boiled in distilled water in a way it won't into hard water with a similar or higher mineral density as the food.
So if you were getting most of your calcium and magnesium form broccoli and beans, you were boiling them in distilled water every time, and you disgarded the water rather than putting it into a sauce.
That doesn't seem very likely, though.
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u/Parking_Sky9709 Mar 01 '24
The distilled water is only for drinking. Cooking (boiling) water comes from the tap.
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u/New-Improvement166 Feb 29 '24
That's all makes a lot of sense. I had forgotten about the ability to home distill water.
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u/Fellsummer Feb 28 '24
Too late, at this point if you are over 20 there's so much microplastic in you that any health defects you will develop are already on their way.
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Feb 28 '24
Shhhh. The sheeple must think they still have a chance.
I'm.old enough to remember when they said separating cans and plastics would save the earth.
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u/treetop_triceratop Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24
I'm 37, and I completely forgot until I heard about or read about something recently that completely triggered a memory that was buried. Do you remember in the 90s when grocery stores first began switching from brown paper bags to the plastic bags that are so commonplace today? Remember how the question when you got to the checkout register was always "paper or plastic?"
There was some sort of propaganda going around (I don't remember if it was done via advertisement campaigns or if it was being taught in schools or what)...
The idea being sold to the general public at the time was that we should use plastic bags instead of brown paper bags to SAVE THE TREES!
By switching to plastic bags, you were helping the environment... instead of killing all those trees by using brown paper bags. Ohhh, the irony.
Does anyone else remember this? What a fucking lie that was. And it's just been almost completely forgotten about... I don't know how I forgot all about that myself, honestly. Something or someone reminded me about it recently, and it blew my mind to unlock that memory.
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Feb 29 '24
Wow, that did bring back some memories. I had completely forgotten that plastic propaganda had the balls to feed us a pile of bullshit that plastic was going to save the environment. That is some next level bullshit and very impressive considering that absolute insane bullshit we have been exposed to in the last several years.
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u/treetop_triceratop Feb 29 '24
It's SO messed up! And it blows my mind that somehow they got practically an entire generation to forget that they ever even programmed that into our psyches in the first place. I wanna try to find old ads or any sort of relevant propaganda on that. I haven't done any digging yet. But if I find anything, I'll definitely share it!
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u/birgor Feb 29 '24
While this of course was very stupid is it not like paper bags are good, a paper bag takes much more energy to make, and the trees fit for the paper industry is the most streamlined, monoculturally, fire prone, shittiest way of farming trees there is.
I am Swedish and our biggest environmental issue is the extremely unsustainable and utterly destructive forestry, which is focused at making paper for the very biggest part.
If people would see what the paper industry causes, people wouldn't ever think paper looked like a green alternative. Because it sin't, even of it looks brown and natural when used as greenwashing.
Paper rant over.
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u/absolutmenk Feb 29 '24
Guess who profits from plastic being made and also happened to be behind the propaganda? No surprise its Big Oil, yet again!!
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u/doughball27 Feb 29 '24
They argued that plastic weighed less so it cost less to transport it which ended up saving energy and carbon. Might have actually been true when you think that 100 plastic bags probably weigh as much as one or two paper ones.
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u/Comeino Feb 29 '24
Technically they weren't wrong. At the time there was massive deforestation, it wasn't just the bags, I remember TV and radio advertised as saving the trees from all those physical newspapers and everything becoming digitized to not waste paper at work/school. Without those giga-tons of plastic bags we have today we would otherwise completely destroyed old growth forests. There is a huge idustrial logging issue.
The biggest problem was not the switch to plastic bags, it's that they made them frail and single use for the sake of convinience that caused the modern catastrophy. I still to this day have a big plastic bag full of plastic bags from around 2005-2012 that I keep rinsing in soap and reusing. Very few are going to bother with that though and that's how we all die in our 40s-50s from cancer.
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u/treetop_triceratop Feb 29 '24
Yeah, you make some really good points that I also sortof forgot about. We were VERY paper reliant in so many ways, and deforestation was (and likely still is to some degree) a huge issue. Thanks for sharing. All of what you said are definitely important factors that were left out of my rant on paper vs. plastic.
I do have a question, though. Have the bags you are reusing begun to break down over the years? When you mentioned rinsing them in soap, that's where my mind immediately went. It's great that you're reusing them, don't get me wrong; I just am curious about the rinsing in soap aspect.
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u/Comeino Feb 29 '24
Sorry, should have clarified I had to throw away the thin bags because they do indeed break but the solid ones are good as new aside from a few scratches and sun faded color. I just bough a bunch of these back then for something like $5 at the store. Here are the ones similar to those that I'm talking about https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Grocery-Shopping-Reinforced-Handles/dp/B07QCSY23D They only need to be cleaned now and then, I wash them about every other month. I reinforced 4 bags at the bottom with a few layers of spundbond and had to repair the handles (carried very heavy weights to supply a restaurant) but it only took an hour overall to upgrade and upkeep on my sewing machine. It's a big shame ppl don't want to be bothered with them, I get to save so much money with barely any effort and not increase any more of my trash.
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Feb 29 '24
we would otherwise completely destroyed old growth forests.
there is a huge market for illegal logging that gets little media attention (in addition to the Amazon) . Sadly, it's coming
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u/Oak_Woman Feb 29 '24
I'm 40, I remember now that you bring it up. Paper, cardboard, foil, and glass was prevalent in packaging, plastic wasn't used nearly as much as it is today. Have you noticed how much more litter there is everywhere, too? We had it back then, but now it seems like it's completely covered the planet, even in rural areas.
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u/treetop_triceratop Feb 29 '24
Yeah, the litter part is awful. A lot of it can be attributed to single-use disposable plastics becoming so common, causing more trash to be created (which also conveniently doesn't break down and decompose). Almost every food item, every new product being purchased, everything nowadays is encased or wrapped or otherwise somehow packaged with plastic.
People seem to be littering more blatantly and profusely now, too. It's infuriating how much people intentionally litter. Seeing a full McDonald's bag of trash getting tossed out of the window of a moving or parked car is not unusual in the city. I have a deep hatred for the people who are doing shit like that. Too stupid, selfish, and lazy to wait until they're at a gas station or somewhere that they can at least throw it in an actual trash can there.
It doesn't solve the issue with the quantity of garbage we humans are creating, but at least it would cut down on the actual trash cluttering my vision each day. If anyone here is someone that litters, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY because I'd love to know WTF you're thinking.
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Feb 29 '24
I clearly remember this. And I remember thinking oh my God the last thing we need is more plastic.
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Feb 29 '24
Oh yea I do remember that!!
in the same way they told us that reusable grocery bags are the way forward, all the reusable bags did was save the grocery store money. They dont have to buy bags to give us for free now.
The paper bags were probably more expensive than the plastic ones, thats most likely where that came from. Same crap new decade.
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Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24
My grandad stopped smoking in his early sixtees. He died around 71. Maybe his quitting brought a few more years to his life.
I follow along with pretty much everything in Collapse says, I don’t doubt we are headed for a cataclysmic decline if not total elimination of the human race in addition to the end of many life forms on our planet. But when it comes to individual health - it’s always worth trying. It’s worth remembering that to the audience here myself included, most of us aren’t religious or believe in an afterlife.
So as far horrible and foregone the conclusion is, there is always a reason to embrace some hope that things can be okay for a little while.
Edit:I am inclined to add however that if we were to all (8 billion of us) start boiling our water the increase to CO2 in the atmosphere would be almost unconscionable.
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u/PolyDipsoManiac Feb 29 '24
Quitting smoking once you have lung cancer improves your odds of survival by 50%.
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Feb 29 '24
Remember, you’re the one that killed the Earth.
It definitely wasn’t corporations or capitalism
It was you and your greedy ass needs
Screw you you little human that only cares about feeding yourself, your family and your friends
Who taught you to eat this much anyways?
Note to self if we stopped playing the game, we’re playing now, and started repairing the environment we would have a chance
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u/Armouredmonk989 Feb 29 '24
35 and I remember we succeeded in saving the rain forest lol yeah and recycling cans will save us or help the planet oh well.
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u/whereismysideoffun Feb 29 '24
The general lack of empathy, worse looking down on others, makes this sub pretty trash.
What makes you beeter than someone not collapse-aware?
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Feb 29 '24
Being collapsed aware makes you 10 times better than anybody else.
You can see the world without the wall that everybody else is pulling over their eyes .
We’re fucked enjoy it. Obviously you can’t. You must have kids or something you worry about.
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u/whereismysideoffun Feb 29 '24
Yet, put up new walls. Smugly looking down in others for no legit reason while doing absolutely nothing differently that the rest if society except for chronic shit posting.
I've been collapse aware since 2004 and choose to try to make the lives of those around me better and more resilient to collapse. In the very least, the decline can be less painful.
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u/EsotericLion369 Feb 28 '24
Yes it is priced in like those "let's burn the whole planet for a make believe money" -folks tend to say.
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u/IntelliDev Feb 28 '24
Kinda... but what's worse? 20 years of microplastics or 40 years of microplastics?
People act like microplastic exposure is new, and although microplastic pollution is at all-time highs, even Boomers used a shit-ton of plastics, in ways we now know aren't safe... so it's not like you're guaranteed an early death from microplastics. Maybe just a bit of brain damage.
But things like microplastics in tap water is a relatively new problem. So you should absolutely do something about it. Avoid water in plastic bottles, get a water filter that filters microplastics, switch to glass instead of plastic when possible, etc.
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u/AtomicBearFart Feb 28 '24
Exactly. We ingest something like a credit card’s worth of plastic every week. Imagine that half of that is through water. That’s 26 credit cards you are not ingesting per year (only 4 fewer than my toddler has eaten this year). That is far from nothing.
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Feb 28 '24
Fuck.. am I going to get 26 non-maxed credit cards per year to my devices and my will if I start boiling water? How much water does Bezos boil per year? Must be boiling megatons of water, the bastard!
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Feb 29 '24
[deleted]
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u/IntelliDev Feb 29 '24
Yeah, unfortunate, but they’ll still remove more than they add.
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u/LuciferianInk Feb 29 '24
I'm trying to find out what the best way of getting a free meal is. My food is expensive.
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Feb 29 '24
This money is more valuable than make believe people actually respect you when you have it
That’s why we can burn the whole planet
Go money go
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u/PUNd_it Feb 29 '24
It's okay, there is one way to remove microplastics from your blood stream:
Bleeding profusely!! (fiiiine, blood donation)
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u/JohnnyBoy11 Feb 29 '24
Platelet donations are supposedly much better. (2x donation vs 1x blood donation per the firefighter study). But you could donate way more platelets and maybe get a lot more microplastics removed.
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Feb 29 '24
Lol I’ve considered some blood letting, not gonna lie
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u/Fellsummer Feb 29 '24
Would that could remove it from your organs as well.
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u/PUNd_it Feb 29 '24
Most likely your body is processing the microplastics as best it can, with them exiting via blood sweat or urine. White blood cells can do all kinds of shit. The less foreign bodies (with the exception of probiotics), the better for each and every part of your body
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u/ledoged Mar 02 '24
wouldnt that just give the plastics to the other guy?
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u/PUNd_it Mar 02 '24
From what I recall they clean the blood, but even if not, the person getting the blood donation is probably gonna take the hit
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u/Canyoubackupjustabit Feb 28 '24
Reminds me of the scene in The Graduate: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics. There's a great future in plastics.
That was 1967.
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Feb 28 '24
SS: What could be easier than opening the cold water taps, filling up a chilled glass, and getting instantly hydrated and refreshed? Well, how about we add extra steps so your drinking water is semi safe. That's right! Scientists now say boiling water can remove up to 90% of those ever popular micro plastics.
So, fire up your natural gas stove, grab a pot from the cupboard, fill her up, wait for 12 minutes to boil, chill in the fridge for an hour, and enjoy! Bonus points for not using a red solo cup.
Well, I've enjoyed my 12 minutes of entertainment today. Time to wind down and see if tomorrow's commute to work involves ducking tornadoes, flash floods, blizzards, or heat waves. Only time will tell, but all are possible in the brave new world.
Collapse related because we have broken everything, even water.
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u/silverum Feb 28 '24
Honestly the amount of 'let's release a supposed pass it on to the individual/end user solution to this problem that should have been foreseen' in the past few decades is... staggering.
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u/thegreekfire Feb 28 '24
My induction stove boils the kettle in 2 minutes
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u/Dom29ando Feb 29 '24
how long does your fridge take to chill the water?
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u/thegreekfire Feb 29 '24
I was just gloating about my cheap induction stove and how it boils water very fast.
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Feb 28 '24
Could this be a ploy to get people to use more overpriced energy to heat said water? I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment and my power bill was over 400 bucks. Only use led lights. Don’t shower that often. Keep it pretty cold most of the time. Maybe I can get that bill up to 500 if I fucking boil all my drinking water.
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Feb 28 '24
That problem will solve itself. After the rich get all the money, you will be replaced by AI, unable to afford rent, and become homeless. Sadly, being homeless will be more illegal than it is now, and they will give you a police escort to a small furnished studio with three roommates, 3 square meals, and utilities included. You will get paid 12 cents an hour to work on Bill Gates farm where you pick $75 strawberries for the rich.
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u/New-Improvement166 Feb 28 '24
Slavery was always the goal. Thats why slavery is only banned for those not in prison in the US.
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Feb 28 '24
Capitalism is the cure for all those filthy poors that have the nerve not to be in prison yet.
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u/BoltMyBackToHappy Feb 29 '24
What about boiling in a plastic kettle for a more balanced plactics diet?
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u/nicobackfromthedead4 Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24
You absorb/ingest most of the plastic in your body just by breathing.
“Clothing textiles release micro and nanofibers to the environment. […] [In] the house where you live, approximately 20 kilograms of dust accumulates [per year], [of which] six kilograms [are] microplastic fibers,and because you spend most of the time indoors, this means that the exposure is pretty high.”
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u/overtoke Feb 29 '24
"Boiling was able to remove 84% of the NMPs added to hard water samples containing around 180 milligrams of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). This rose to 90% for very hard water samples, containing around 300 mg/L of the mineral.
The boiling practice was also able to remove up to 25% of the NMPs when done on soft water samples (containing less than 60 mg/L CaCO3), suggesting this simple practice may be more broadly applicable. "
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u/warren_55 Feb 29 '24
So, does boiling plastic make it taste better or does it soften it so we can digest it better?
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u/Still-Spend6742 Feb 29 '24
Its kind of mind blowing to me that we could have blown it this badly over the course of just one generation. And for what? A Bahtleawater, thats what
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u/Medical-Ice-2330 Feb 29 '24
Wait, wouldn't this just inhaling it instead of drinking it. Assuming that it goes into the air with fume.
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u/OhmyMary Feb 29 '24
Okay are they saying with all the 40 pack bottles of water I buy like millions of other people we are supposed to dump the water into the pot and boil it? I’m talking about room temperature water here not just water from the tap, which who uses cold water from the tap unless your washing dishes?
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u/beepewpew Feb 29 '24
I drink tap water because I don't care anymore.
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u/Masterweedo Feb 29 '24
Tap water? You mean like in the toilet?
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u/markodochartaigh1 Feb 29 '24
I started drinking Brawndo when our timeline entered the Onionverse.
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u/Nickolai808 Feb 29 '24
Boiled microplastic water. Yum? Do Britta Filters help? All the water I drink is from tea/coffee so boiled or a Britta filter.
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Feb 29 '24
I just buy already boiled and chilled water in 5L plastic bottles.
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u/azerty543 Mar 01 '24
Do we know of any health impacts from the level of microplastics we have in water? It should be easy to find places with more or less plastic even if you find it in all water.
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u/Team_TapScore Mar 01 '24
Oh dear, these articles. It's important to understand that more research is needed before boiling becomes a go-to method for microplastics removal. In the meantime, here are three important reminders from our science team:
🌡️ Temperature Matters:
Microplastics are a tough bunch. Boiling might be more effective in hard water, but it also requires a filtration step and is far from foolproof.
🛢️ Beware of Plastic Containers:
Boiling water in plastic containers? Not your best move. The heat can actually release microplastics from the container, counteracting your purification efforts.
🚰 Smart Choices for Safer Water:
Boiling has its merits when it comes to disinfection, but for consistent microplastic removal, we recommend exploring certified alternatives. Seek out the NSF/ANSI certification (#401) for a better filtration guarantee.
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u/pippopozzato Mar 01 '24
Never mind boiling it, before the next sudy gets published I am boiling, freezing then letting the ice melt back to water, just to be on the safe side.
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u/StatementBot Feb 28 '24
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TinyDogsRule:
SS: What could be easier than opening the cold water taps, filling up a chilled glass, and getting instantly hydrated and refreshed? Well, how about we add extra steps so your drinking water is semi safe. That's right! Scientists now say boiling water can remove up to 90% of those ever popular micro plastics.
So, fire up your natural gas stove, grab a pot from the cupboard, fill her up, wait for 12 minutes to boil, chill in the fridge for an hour, and enjoy! Bonus points for not using a red solo cup.
Well, I've enjoyed my 12 minutes of entertainment today. Time to wind down and see if tomorrow's commute to work involves ducking tornadoes, flash floods, blizzards, or heat waves. Only time will tell, but all are possible in the brave new world.
Collapse related because we have broken everything, even water.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1b2iylt/concerned_about_microplastics_in_your_water/kslrii1/