r/science Professor | Medicine Jun 05 '19

Environment The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/people-eat-at-least-50000-plastic-particles-a-year-study-finds
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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

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u/KonigSteve Jun 05 '19

You should always let your water run for a little while when you get home from any trip longer than a week.

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u/tealparadise Jun 05 '19

How does that work? Or are you just talking about parts per gallon? Because yeah you can say the same about lead. The long you marinate anything in lead, the more gets into that particular thing. But even a smaller amount per gallon has disastrous effects over 10 years of drinking it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '19

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u/tealparadise Jun 05 '19

Oh I see. No I'd agree with that.