The researchers found an average of around 100 microplastic particles per liter in glass bottles of soft drinks, lemonade, iced tea and beer. That was five to 50 times higher than the rate detected in plastic bottles or metal cans.
“We expected the opposite result,” Ph.D. student Iseline Chaib, who conducted the research, told AFP.
“We then noticed that in the glass, the particles emerging from the samples were the same shape, color and polymer composition—so therefore the same plastic—as the paint on the outside of the caps that seal the glass bottles,” she said.
The paint on the caps also had “tiny scratches, invisible to the naked eye, probably due to friction between the caps when there were stored,” the agency said in a statement.
This could then “release particles onto the surface of the caps,” it added.
For the people in the comments who either won’t or seemingly can’t read the article: The paint on the top of the caps is plastic-based and before they’re put on the bottle they’re stored in a big jumbled up pile where the paint chips off and coats the caps in tiny flakes. When the cap gets put on the bottle, the flakes on the bottom of the cap get washed off into your drink. Studies show that washing the caps first dramatically reduces the micro-plastic contamination.
WTF. Guess I’m an android now, because I’m half plastics on the inside.
I find this article confusing. Can someone explain it in a simple language as if I am stupid or sth
Bottle caps are stored in big bags of some sort before being placed on bottles.
They have sharp edges and they scratch each other’s paint as they shift around in the bags.
The scratching produces a fine dust of plastic/paint particles. The dust covers all sides of the bottle caps in the bags.
The caps are placed on the bottles. The dust goes into the liquid inside the bottle. People drink it.
So nothing coupled to the glass but rather the cap having a extra plastic layer on the wet side.
Sounds like we found the issue, now it’s just a matter of producers improving the caps
Only if it doesn’t cut it to record profits
Only if it somehow increases profit. FTFY
Nah ill just spend $50 to have a Congress member introduce a bill to make regulating microplastics illegal
Ha! Good one.
Just use the plasticbottlecaps.
No, the paint on the outside.
Yes. So many people are misunderstanding this article… The microplastics are on the inside, in the drink, and they are bits of the paint from the exterior of bottle caps that stuck to the inside of other caps when the caps were all jumbled together in big bags before they were placed on the bottles.
In a bizarre twist, plastic bottles have been found to contain alarming levels of microglass.
You mean sand?
Lets go back to corks
As someone in a cork industry, you really don’t want that.
What is this teasing? Elaborate.
It takes a lot of effort to soak the corks.
Its really hard to soak my own cork, so I just get my girlfriend to soak my cork instead.
I also get this guy’s girlfriend to soak my cork
She does have a lot of experience soaking cork
We know
Why?
Corka Cola.
Man on the surface this reeks of inside payoffs. I guess the technicality is plastic caps on glass bottles?? Which seems weird and nothing I’ve ever seen. Unless they’re referencing the seal on the inside of some metal caps on glass bottles? Either way, seems suspect. I’d assume that overall drinking from glass is safer, as with plastic on any timeline you’re dealing with the plastic breaking down and leaching chemicals and micro plastics into the liquid, which wouldn’t be an issue with glass.
I thought they were talking about the seal.
Not plastic caps, plastic paint. The printing on bottlecaps is a polymer and it gets scuffed.
Odd. I would have thought that the paint, being on the exterior, wouldn’t leak into the beverage contained inside the glass.
But apparently, they found that blowing air over the caps reduced the amount of detected contamination by 60 per cent. So it seems like an easy fix that manufacturers can implement inexpensively (literally just an electric fan)
Or just not paint the caps, at least not with plastic.
There is a real reason that the caps are painted. Glass beverage bottles are usually stored in a crate and grabbed from the top, so the design on the lid is what restaurant or store employees used to distinguish what drink is contained within it. This allows employees to distinguish similar-coloured drinks (e.g. Coca-Cola vs Pepsi or two different brands of beer) just from looking down at the top of the bottle.
But there probably is a way to paint them without using plastics
Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to be an electric fan, but compressed air. Even more unfortunately, compressed air turns out to be a major cost factor due to the cost of running compressors, which might prevent adoption.
The original paper mentions blowing the caps out with an “air bomb”, which I’m pretty sure is a mistranslation stemming from the French term “Bombe d’Air Comprimé”, i. e. an air duster, a can of compressed air. In an industrial setting, you’d use a compressor for this, naturally.
The paint itself on the outside of the bottle cap. The ultra thin layer of (apparently polymer a.k.a. plastic) paint that make the cap not just metal colored.
Just pour it from the glass bottle to the plastic bottle. Problem solved
We just need glass caps then
When I was a kid they were made from metal
When I was a kid they were made from cork.
How are you still alive?🙈
They are still made from cork.
For water bottles?where?
No, wine.
Well yes, but they mostly switch to plastic as well for different reasons.
In a bizarre twist, glass caps have been found to contain alarming levels of microdrink.
It actually exists for some brands of wine. It’s annoying to open though.
…do plastic bottles not have caps? I’m confused.
their caps are fully plastic, not painted metal. The non-screwtop metal caps need to be bent to release their grip on the bottle. That scrapes the paint off the metal cap.
But the plastic bottle can still create a lot more, surely.
Ok, great find, we can simply switch the caps & solve the problem.
(The corps will do that, right??)But I wander with such tests … could there be any significant detection issues?
Did they have the proper equipment and processes? A methodological limitation to particle size maybe?
Coz some researches find higher concentrations than 100.Anyone drinking beer or soft drinks out of glass bottles probably isn’t worried about micro-plastics.
Why?
Alcohol/sugar contribute significantly to heart disease. Heart disease kills more people than anything. If you’re sucking down beer and pop all the time, microplastics aren’t likely your concern.
Parent commneter implies that people who consume soft drinks or alcohol aren’t concerned about their health because these beverages are not healthy
That’s the implication, yes. Seems to have really hurt some feelings. Heart disease kills more people than microplastics do, and alcohol/sugar contribute to that.
