Intriguingly, beverages packaged in glass containers, encompassing items like water, carbonated drinks, beer, and wine, exhibit higher concentrations of microplastic particles compared to their counterparts in plastic bottles, as revealed by a recent investigation disseminated by France’s national food safety authority on Friday.
Scientists have documented the ubiquitous presence of these minute, largely imperceptible plastic fragments across the globe, infiltrating everything from the air we inhale and the sustenance we consume to their pervasive presence within the human organism.
Currently, no definitive evidence links this widespread plastic contamination to adverse health outcomes in humans; however, a rapidly developing scientific discipline is dedicated to quantifying its extent.
Guillaume Duflos, a research director at ANSES, the French food safety agency, stated to AFP that the research team’s objective was to “ascertain the microplastic load in various beverage categories available in France and evaluate the influence of different packaging types.”
The analytical findings indicated an average of approximately 100 microplastic fragments per liter within glass bottles of non-alcoholic beverages, lemonades, iced teas, and beers. This figure was found to be five to fifty times greater than the levels detected in beverages contained within plastic bottles or metallic cans.
“We had anticipated an inverse correlation in the results,” conveyed PhD candidate Iseline Chaib, who spearheaded the research, to AFP.
“Subsequently, we observed that the plastic fragments isolated from the glass containers shared identical morphological, chromatic, and polymeric characteristics – thus confirming they were extraneous plastics – with the external coating of the caps sealing these glass bottles,” she elaborated.
The agency further noted in a formal statement that the cap coatings exhibited “minute abrasions, imperceptible to the unaided eye, likely resulting from frictional contact between caps during their storage.”
This wear and tear could then “facilitate the release of particles onto the cap surfaces,” the statement added.
Wine’s Notable Absence
Regarding both still and carbonated water, the microplastic content was notably low across all vessel types, ranging from 4.5 particles per liter in glass bottles to 1.6 particles in plastic ones.
Wine also presented minimal microplastic contamination, even in glass bottles sealed with caps. Duflos commented that the underlying reasons for this disparity “remain to be elucidated.”
Conversely, non-alcoholic beverages contained an average of around 30 microplastics per liter, lemonades approximately 40, and beers about 60.
In the absence of established reference levels for potentially harmful microplastic quantities, ANSES indicated that it was not feasible to definitively ascertain whether these recorded figures posed a health risk.
Nevertheless, the agency suggested that beverage producers could implement straightforward measures to mitigate the shedding of microplastics from bottle caps.
The authority’s investigation encompassed a remedial procedure that involved air-blasting the caps, followed by a rinse with aqueous and alcoholic solutions, which successfully reduced the microplastic contamination by 60 percent.
The comprehensive investigation, published online by ANSES in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis last month, provides these significant findings.
