Plastics-free water easy to produce at home according to scientists

While plastic has multiple uses and can be found almost everywhere, ingesting it can have serious long-term effects on human health. Sadly, most of the plastic that ends up in the human body gets inside via food and drink. When talking about drinks that contain plastic, water is the main culprit. Fortunately, a team of scientists from China's Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University has recently proven that basic boiling and filtering can decrease the amount of plastic in both soft water and hard tap water by up to 90 percent.

The aforementioned research team added nanoplastics and microplastics (NMPs) to water, then boiled the resulting liquids, and finally filtered out the precipitates. While the effectiveness of the entire process in removing the NMPs varies depending on the type of water, the maximum efficiency mentioned above is certainly impressive. The minimum of 80 percent is also very good, especially considering that no specialized equipment is needed. "This simple boiling water strategy can 'decontaminate' NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption," reveals the paper entitled Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics, which was published back in February. 

While drinking boiled water can be considered a good solution for reducing exposure to NMPs, those who choose this should also keep in mind that they would need to take supplements of minerals and salts to compensate. Studies on mice revealed that plastics can infiltrate all organs, and this is certainly happening in humans as well. The effects of ingesting plastic particles that have been proven so far include changes in both the gut microbiome and antibiotic resistance, but research in this field is still undergoing.

Those who want to find out more about plastic ingestion and its effects can read Matt Simon's A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, a 252-page book that is available in several digital and physical formats, including Kindle and audiobook.