Normally we think that the glass bottles are a safer choice for drinking, but this would be changing soon as a latest study has thrown a twist into this long-held assumption with surprising findings.
It is revealed that the glass bottles may actually contain far more microplastics than plastic ones, in some cases it can reach up to 50 times more.
These findings are revealed in a study conducted by France’s food safety agency, ANSES, titled ‘Microplastic contaminations in a set of beverages sold in France’, which was published recently in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.
Beer Bottles Aced the Contamination Charts
They have examined popular beverages that included soft drinks, beer, iced tea, and water.
During this survey, the researchers from ANSES analysed 56 beverage samples which included water, soft drinks, iced tea, lemonade, beer, and wine, packaged in different materials like plastic, glass, brick cartons, cans, and cubitainers.
It appears that the glass bottles had the highest microplastic contamination across most beverages.
On average, beer bottles had the highest contamination at 82.9 microplastic particles (MPs) per litre, followed by Lemonades with 45.2 MPs per litre, Colas contained 31.4 MPs per litre, Iced teas had 28.5 MPs per litre, while
Waters had the lowest contamination at 2.9 MPs per litre.
But, all in all glass bottles still had higher levels than plastic.
Initially, researchers believed that plastic would be the bigger culprit, but surprisingly found the opposite.
Beverages With Higher Contains Of Microplastics
Let’s go through a quick contamination snapshot (microplastic particles per litre):
- Beer (glass bottles): ~133 MPs per litre
- Lemonade (glass bottles): ~112 MPs per litre
- Cola (glass bottles): ~103 MPs per litre
- Iced Tea (glass bottles): ~86 MPs per litre
- Water (glass bottles): ~4.5 MPs per litre
Contrasting the usual belief, plastic and canned versions of these drinks had significantly lower levels of microplastics.
Here it is noteworthy that the problem is not with the glass itself but it’s with the caps.
According to this study, most microplastic particles in beverages stored in glass bottles matched the colour and chemical composition of the paint used on the outside of the bottle caps.
So, the caps, especially those made of metal with painted coatings, are likely to have the shedding microplastics into the drink.
A simple cleaning method, blowing and rinsing the caps before sealing, could reduce microplastic contamination by about three times as revealed by the experiments.
Besides this, other sources such as Manufacturing processes, Screwing/unscrewing caps can introduce particles,
Environmental exposure: Poor storage and handling,
Paint and adhesives: Especially on caps and labels could also help in contamination.
However, wine bottles came out as an exception as they were found to have the lower contamination because they were sealed with cork stoppers instead of metal caps.
Here mentioned, microplastics are tiny plastic fragments less than five millimetres in size and they are found almost everywhere, from the deepest oceans to the food and drinks we consume.
