According to a wealth of recent scientific literature, microplastics, tiny pieces of debris anywhere from one micrometer to five millimeters in size, are absolutely everywhere in nature. They’ve even seemingly invaded our bodies, with studies finding them inside our arteries, reproductive organs, and brains.
It’s hard to even grapple with everything that exposes you to plastic on a daily basis. And now we’ve got one more: according to a new study published in the aptly-named Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics, Griffith University research fellow Xiangyu Liu and his colleagues found that common containers, including those ubiquitous disposable coffee cups, could be releasing vast amounts of microplastics as they heat up — a thing that happens every time a hot beverage is poured into them.
“As the temperature of the liquid inside a container increases, the release of microplastics generally increases too,” Liu noted in an essay about the work for The Conversation.
After conducting an initial meta-analysis of 30 peer-reviewed studies, they found that the “releases [of microplastics] ranged from a few hundred particles to more than eight million particles per liter, depending on the material and study design.”
Then they took matters into their own hands. In an experiment involving 400 coffee cups and liquids at various temperatures ranging from iced (41 degrees Fahrenheit) to hot (140 degrees Fahrenheit), they found that temperature indeed had an immense effect on the amount of microplastics being released.
Leaving the drink to sit for hours appeared to have far less of an effect than the “initial temperature of the liquid when it first hits the plastic.” Paper cups with plastic liners released fewer microplastics than all-plastic cups, they found, regardless of temperature.
The researchers found that drinking just ten ounces of hot coffee out of all-plastic cups could result in the drinker ingesting 363,000 pieces of microplastic particles a year.
While that may sound alarming, there are some important caveats to the findings that should be considered before giving up your morning bodega coffee habit for good. For one, as Liu pointed out in his Conversation essay, we don’t know how long microplastics actually remain in the human body.
Accurately measuring how many of the particles are present in our bodies has proven extremely difficult as well. Case in point, just earlier this week, The Guardian published an investigation casting serious doubt on recent studies about the detection of microplastics throughout the human body. Experts noted that they could be the result of contamination, triggering a major debate over the legitimacy of the findings.
In other words, many of the alarming studies we’ve come across may be false positives, further highlighting how much there still is to learn about microplastics and health.
“This is really forcing us to reevaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body,” chemist Roger Kuhlman told The Guardian. “Which, it turns out, is really not very much. Many researchers are making extraordinary claims, but not providing even ordinary evidence.”
Nonetheless, Liu opined that as we await more clarity on the situation, “it’s good to be aware of potential microplastic sources in our daily lives.”
The researcher also offered some tips to ensure our coffee shop habits won’t negatively impact our health in the long run.
“For hot drinks, the best option is to use a reusable cup made of stainless steel, ceramic, or glass, as these materials do not shed microplastics,” he wrote. “If we must use a disposable cup, our research suggests that plastic-lined paper cups generally shed fewer particles than pure plastic cups, though neither is microplastic free.”
Liu also noted that “since heat is the factor that triggers plastic release, avoid putting boiling liquids directly into plastic-lined containers.”
“By understanding how heat and material choice interact, we can design better products and make better choices for our daily caffeine fix,” he concluded.
More on microplastics: Bugs Fed Microplastics Grow to Ludicrous Size
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