Be careful with plastic tea bags!

Recently, a new Canadian study found that a bag of plastic tea bags may release billions, or even tens of billions of microplastics, significantly higher than the estimated amount of microplastics a person ingests throughout the year, but so far there is no evidence that, Ingestion of microplastics poses a threat to huma.

According to reports, researchers at Magill University in Canada found that immersing a plastic tea bag in a cup of almost boiling hot water (95 degrees Celsius) will release about 16 billion plastic particles and 1 billion smaller nanoplastic particles to the in the c.

In the study, published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, researchers tested four different types of plastic commercial tea bags in Montreal stores and cafes, opened the tea bags, washed them, and immersed them in nearly boiling water for five minut.

According to the study, they found that a single tea bag released more than 16 billion microplastic particles, "several orders of magnitude higher than the previous plastic load of other food.

Most tea bags are made from natural fibers, but many brands of tea bags made from natural fibers still use plastic to seal, the report sa.

Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic, defined by researchers as between 100 nanometers and 5 millimeters in size, and are primarily produced by the breakdown of plastic was.

To test the potential toxicity of microplastics released from tea bags, the Canadian research team put water fleas in contaminated water and found that microplastics affected the behavior of the fleas and caused them to develop abnormal.

The researchers speculate that the reason these tea bags released a lot of plastic particles may be that these plastic tea bags come into contact with boiling water, and even "food-grade" plastics can break down or ooze toxic substances when heated to above 40 degrees Celsi.