Plastic Infiltration in Fruits, Vegetables

"[The research highlights the] worrying estimated daily intakes, either for adults or for children in terms of plastic particles [but the extent of the potential effects on humans has yet to be understood]."
University of Catania, Sicily, study

"They are spherical particles with a size up to 2 micrometers and they are a little bit flexible, so they can themselves more or less be squeezed into the small pores’ cells of the plant roots."
"Another mechanism is that inside newly developed roots there are small cracks present, and then the particles [go into] those cracks, so it’s even possible that bigger particles than the ones we studied might also be taken up by plants."
Willie Peijnenburg, environmental toxicology professor, Leiden University, Netherlands

Apples were found to be the most contaminated fruit in the study, while carrots were found to be the most contaminated vegetables

Researchers from University of Catania, Sicily, under lead project scientist Margherita Ferrante, have conducted studies into the prevalence of microplastics in the food we eat, drawn up from the soil they're grown in. Generally other research conducted by other scientists has discovered that carrots are microplastics-contaminated, representing the root vegetable with the highest concentration of microplastics, but how this take-up of contaminated fruits and vegetables will impact on peoples' health is as yet unknown.

Pears contained the second highest level of microplastics in fruit

Researchers associated with Dr.Ferrante's laboratory sourced fruits and vegetables from local markets, from supermarkets and other shops; thoroughly washed, peeled, blended and dried the samples. After which they were analyzed with the use of an electron microscope to enable the calculation of the microparticles present. Their findings validated that plastic particles tended to see fruit concentrating greater amounts of microplastic than do vegetables.

And apples, according to the research analytics, turn out to be the fruit most heavily contaminated with microplastics

Microplastics generally can include particles as minuscule as ten nanometres (a million nanometres in a millimetre), and they measure less than five millimetres in diameter. The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, calls for an urgent review of the effects on human health of the presence of microplastics in the fruits and vegetables we eat.

Carrots were shown to contain the smallest pieces of microplastic, taken from soil

Another peer-reviewed study made the claim that plastics are absorbed with water through the root system of crops. Lianzhen Li of the Yanthal Institute of Coastal Zone Research in China partnered with Willie Peijnenburg from Leiden University in the Netherlands, their work set to be published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Scientists have believed for decades that larger plastic particles could not pass the physical barriers of plant tissue. This latest research, however, has now cast doubt on the hypothesis. Root vegetables such as carrots, radishes, turnips and leafy vegetables such as lettuce were found to be most at risk of microplastic contamination.



 

Global Plastic-Embedded Rainfall

"It is raining plastic."
"It wasn't entirely surprising to find them in an urban environment. But when we saw them in the remote areas of the mountain, we started to become a little more surprised at those results."
Gregory Wetherbee study lead researcher, research chemist, U.S. Geological Survey

"We've been collecting snow in places like Whitehorse, Alert and Eureka as well as in southern Ontario and we've found microplastics in all our snow samples, often in microfibre form."
"We've also found them deep in the ocean sediment and in plankton. Everywhere we look, we find it."
"We're finding a good amount especially in the Arctic sediment, since the sedimentation rate [rate by which particles settle down] is quite low versus the lakes."
"It's not a constant source in the Canadian Arctic. There are winds that come from over an urban city where they pick [microplastics] up and transport it to the Arctic. And then in the winter, there is that Arctic haze where you have almost a vortex around that keeps it in."
"While we can say that urban centres are sources, we can't pinpoint. The atmosphere doesn't obey national boundaries, it just goes where it wants."
Liisa Jantunen, researcher, analytical environmental analyst, Environment Canada

@start_stoling

"In my lab, we might spend about 40 percent of the time doing method development, which I would love to not have to do." 
"It's similar to the way we talk about persistent organic chemical pollutants in that it seems as if they're everywhere because they have this ability to transport everywhere."
"They have chemicals on them that can bioaccumulate and are toxic."
Chelsea Rochman, researcher, marine ecosystems, University of Toronto

A plastic bag floats in Lake Ontario on the waterfront in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Justin Trudeau’s government announced plans Monday to ban single-use plastics such as straws and plates in Canada. Cole Burston/Bloomberg

The last two years of research have informed that plastic is raining down in Canada; which is to say rain falling in Canada has minuscule amounts of microplastic within each raindrop and no one has any idea where it has come from or what the final results of its presence will wreak on the environment, much less the plants and animals, including humans. This was an accidental discovery that occurred while geologists were researching the effects of nitrogen pollution and discovered tiny plastic fibres, beads and shards within samples of rainwater collected from Denver, Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, a distance of 1,763 kilometers from Canada.

This is a new area of research that has fairly recently opened; the presence of plastic particles smaller than five millimetres in length -- about the size of a breadcrumb -- but research has revealed an incredibly wide distribution area of plastic pollution in the most remote corners of the Earth. Dr. Jantunen's research into microplastics in the Canadian Arctic and Great Lakes was initiated in 2017 and she accepts the survey's discovery of plastic raining down to be just another aspect of the level to which the planet is inundated with plastic.

It makes common sense that microplastic presence is higher in urban environments like the city of Toronto than it would be in remote regions, due to the numerous sources creating and consuming plastic. Included are laundry clothes dryers and vacuum cleaners which produce microfibres like lint and dust, points out Dr. Jantunen. The further one removes from urban centres, the less the pollution concentration. Dr. Jantunen estimates that for every gram of (Arctic) sediment up to hundreds of microplastic particles could be present, and for each litre, hundreds to thousands of particles.

European researchers discovered earlier this year the presence of tiny plastic fibres in the French Pyrenees mountain regions carried, it appears, by the wind, estimating that France is "blanketed by 2,000 tons of plastic particles" annually. Alarmingly high concentrations of microplastics were discovered by Swiss researchers -- as high as 14,000 particles per litre of snow samples in the Arctic snowfields -- a report published this month details.

When larger pieces of plastic degrade minuscule microplastics eventually result which are buoyant, readily transportable through the atmosphere, and through water systems. No one knows of a certainty where these microplastics are arriving from but evidence in the Canadian Arctic suggest some could originate in Toronto; on the other hand it could just as well be coming from Europe. Identification is difficult in determining where microplastics originate as a result of the lack of technology able to analyze the evidence, points out Dr. Rochman, a researcher in plastic pollutants in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Not only is there a mystery surrounding the origins of the microplastics insinuating a presence worldwide, but little is also known relating to the potential toxicity of microplastic pollution. Basically, because of their infinitesimally small size, microplastics are capable of entering biochemical pathways within the body. They have been known as "carriers of medication" in mainstream medicine, and little is known yet whether they have any effect or are simply excreted, discarded by the body.

GoranH | Pixabay

Ingesting Environmental Microplastics

"The last thing I want to do is cause some sort of undue alarm over plastics."
"But even if we're considering what I would call a pretty limited literature, we're getting into hundreds of thousands [of particles] a year. That's a non-trivial dose."
"If you tell people more facts surrounding micro-plastics in the ocean, they don't seem perturbed by it. But if you tell them there's a small piece of plastic in their food, they're really connected to that."
"I would say the likelihood that it's an underestimate of your total [plastic] consumption over the year is pretty high."
Kieran Cox, biologist, University of Victoria

Hailey Davies and Wendy Fleming, contributors to the UVic study on human consumption of microplastics using a seine fishing net in Sidney, BC. Credit: Kieran Cox.

Minuscule plastic particles in your food sound absurdly fantastic? Unappealing, certainly. But that's precisely what a new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology has concluded, based on investigating the results of a growing body of research. What Kieran Cox emphasizes is what else his study demonstrates; how little is actually known of the extent, let alone the health impact of microplastics ending up in people's bodies.

Microplastics are produced when all manner of items made of plastic break down in the environment, producing pieces from the size of a grain of rice, down to microscopic bits whose prevalence in the atmosphere we are oblivious to. Microplastics are everywhere. Swirling masses of plastic have been seen in the world's oceans, piled up on land, and circulating in the very air we breathe. This recently published study is the first of its kind, meant to estimate the amount of these minuscule bits that end up in humans.

Tiny fragments and filaments of plastic in table salt crystals. Photograph: Paulo Oliveira/Alamy

The research team headed by Dr. Cox initiated their study by tracking down every published study they could find that focused on the plastics load produced by commonly consumed items of food and drink containers of plastic. The team found studies on sugar additives, salts and beer, and on bottled and tap water. No studies came to their notice on meat and vegetables, but 26 were unearthed on fish and shellfish, salt, beer, sugar additives, both bottled and tap water.

They next made an estimate of how much of these items would be ingested by an average North American, bearing in mind American food guidelines, enabling them to calculate the plastics dose such food items introduce as being between 39,000 to 52,000 microplastics particles annually consumed by each and every individual. At the low end of the spectrum were young girls, and at the high end, adult males.

In this file photo taken on September 17, 2015 shows a Chinese labourer sorting out plastic bottles for recycling in Dong Xiao Kou village, on the outskirt of Beijing. FRED DUFOUR / AFP/Getty Images

The researchers believe the numbers they arrived at to represent an underestimate. They theorize that someone consuming mostly bottled water could be introducing an additional 90,000 bits of microplastics yearly to their bodies. And that's without even considering the microplastics circulating in the atmosphere, where mere breathing likely introduces another 35,000 to 69,000 particles.

That estimate, cautions Dr. Cox, takes into account only about 15 percent of average caloric intake, so the actual numbers are likely to be higher. The big mystery is that the health impacts of microplastics ingestion are unknown. Yet some plastics such as BPA which disrupts endocrine function, are known to be harmful and evidence exists they can carry other toxins.

All of which simply serves to remind us of how much we don't know, and how needful it is that more research into the matter is urgently required.

A blue rectangular piece of microplastic is visible on a researcher's finger in Tacoma, Wash. New research suggests North Americans eat, drink and inhale tens of thousands of tiny plastic particles every year. Ted S. Warren / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Choose Tap Water

"With a lot of this microplastics research we're still at a ground level where we understand that this stuff is everywhere, but what we have less information on is what impact it has on human health and ecosystems."
"Generally, I can see how they've [researchers] obtained the results and it makes sense -- I mean I'm not totally surprised to find that water bottled in plastic contains plastic particles."

Dr. Michael Rennie, Canada Research Chair in Freshwater Ecology and Fisheries

"As part of our continuous review of new evidence on water quality, we will review the very scarce available evidence with the objective of identifying evidence gaps, and establishing a research agenda to inform a more thorough risk assessment."
World Health Organization

"These results indicate the main source of the microplastic particulate [in bottled water] is different; the data seems to suggest that at least some of the plastic contamination may be coming from the industrial process of bottling the water itself."
Study, research team at State University of New York Fredonia

"When you mould [a water bottle] you probably can't mould it without having plastic fragments coming off. We have this idea that plastic is clean but it's an industrial process that manufactures these products so how we can even think it's clean is shocking to me."
"The vast majority of us, especially those of us in developed nations like Canada, the United States and Europe have access to clean, well regulated water which is much cleaner than bottled water."
"You want to be drinking tap water."
Dr. Sherri Mason, team leader, study, State University of New York

Prof. Sherri Mason carried out the laboratory work at the State University of New York (SUNY), on behalf of Orb Media. (Dave MacIntosh/CBC)

"Other contaminants can be absorbed by plastic kind of like a sponge, so even if a microplastic particle passes through your system, it might still be releasing the absorbed contaminants into you and the environment."
Dr. Jesse Vermaire, professor of environmental science, Carleton University, Ottawa

This new study, not yet published -- which concludes that the process of industrial bottling itself may be responsible for the New York State University's team finding that bottled drinking water is frequently contaminated with small particles of plastic -- analyzed 259 bottles commonly found in nine countries, to discover that 93 percent of the bottles were found to be contaminated with the presence of microplastics.

A global investigation into bottled water conducted on behalf of Orb Media resulted in this research and its findings. No particular regulations currently exist with respect to quantity of health-permissible microplastics in bottled water in Canada, in the United States, or in Europe. The reason appears to be that not enough scientific evidence exists for guidelines as to how much plastic exposure can be harmful to human health.

Any plastic less than five millimetres in size is considered to be a microplastic. Dr. Mason explains that this definition is being further defined to incorporate minuscule pieces less than one millimetre in size. An average of 325 microplastic particles per litre of water, less than 0.10 in size (roughly the width of human hair) was found by her research team.

The team discovered that an average of 10.4 microplastic particles greater than 0.10 millimetres per litre of bottled water prevailed, a contaminating presence easily double the average that can be found in tap water, according to a previous study.

Microplastics found in major brands of bottled water. Time

Not only is the amount of microplastics present more numerous but the type of plastic discovered to be present in bottled water was different as well, than what is found in tap water. Tap water contained mostly plastic fibres, in contrast to mostly fragments (rough pieces with sharp edges) discovered in bottled water. And as Dr. Mason explains, the presence of the microplastic particulate peculiar to bottled water relates to the fact that the bottles under study had not been reused, making it unlikely that the bottle was disintegrating.

The actual process of bottling the water was responsible for the presence of microplastics.

In addition to which Dr. Mason noted that those ubiquitous microbeads -- perfectly round, minute bits of plastic -- were not found in the bottled water. A ban on production of microbeads will be taking effect this year as they are being phased out of Canadian products. Eleven water bottle brands were tested in the study: Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life, San Pellegrino, Aqua (Indonesia), Bisleri (India), Epoura (Mexico), Geroisteiner (Germany) Minolta (Brazil, and Wahaha (China).

In responding to a request for comment on the study findings, Dasani, Evian, Nestle, San Pellegrino, Aquafine, Aqua and Gerolsteiner all gave boilerplate responses, emphasizing that they practise high quality standards and are committed to continuing to ensure they produce safe products.

A woman walks past an aisle with bottled water at a supermarket in Los Angeles. Tiny pieces of plastic have been found in over 90% of the world’s most popular bottled water brands, by a study in the US. Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images