I can tell how this story is going to play out – researchers found that there are little bits of plastic in your bottled water. Next up will be an insistence that we’ve all got to stop using plastic bottles, we must scour the oceans of their residue, and while we’re at it why not stop using plastic altogether? This is not the correct lesson to be drawing from this finding – Instead, be glad that we’re getting better at measuring things.
The paper itself is here and the first thing to note is that this isn’t at all about the general water supply being polluted. The paper is quite clear on that – the water in plastic bottles seems to have more bits of plastic in it than tap water. It’s something about putting tap water (which is what some companies do, after a bit of fiddling with it) into plastic bottles which is the issue here. The plastic found is mostly the type used to make the caps, so the logical conclusion is that screwing the cap water bottles puts plastic in our water.
