Tea is a comforting drink that we usually enjoy throughout the year, but how good it is to prepare it in the bags.
By preparing tea with a sachet, millions of microplastics, as well as nanoplastics, would be released in our infusion , indicates a study by McGill University.
We tend to think that it is only about herbal extracts and paper. But this is not the case, many of these sachets contain plastic, mainly polypropylene in their composition to ensure that they maintain their shape without decomposing when in contact with water.
The question that researchers sought to resolve is the amount of plastic particles that are released when preparing our drink. So they opened the bags and took out the tea leaves so they would not interfere with the analysis. Then, they heated the empty tea bags in water to simulate the preparation of tea.
A single plastic teabag at brew temperature was found to release around 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into the water.
In addition, researchers wanted to analyze the effects of these particles, so they experimented with water fleas, small aquatic organisms called “Daphnia Magna,” which are often used in environmental studies.
The water fleas received various doses of micro and nanoplastics released from the tea bags . The organisms survived, although they did show some anatomical and behavioral abnormalities.
Research published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology suggests that more research is needed to determine whether plastics could have more subtle or chronic effects in humans.
It is difficult to know which brands of tea use plastic and which do not, since the composition of their bags is generally not specified on the labels, which at first glance looks like paper.
What can be a good alternative to avoid these particles in our infusions with tea and herbs, is to buy them without individually packaging, buy them in bulk and prepare them using an infusion or traditional filter.