Poison in a Teacup, By Mrs. Vera West

I had made a cup of herbal teas, and was just ready for the next article on the file to do for the blog. Then I read it and decided to tip my otherwise nice tea out. You see I got lazy and used a tea bag, as people often do. But it has been revealed that the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose release toxic micro and nano plastic particles into the tea while brewing, making the tea, basically contaminated:

"Researchers brewed tea using popular tea bags made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose and measured levels of plastic particles in the tea.

Polypropylene was showed to release approximately 1.2 billion plastic particles per millilitre of liquid. Cellulose released about 135 million particles per millilitre and nylon-6 8.8 million particles per millilitre.

The researchers then tested the collected plastic particles to see how they interacted with cells in the human digestive system. They showed that mucus-producing intestinal cells had the highest uptake of micro- and nanoplastics. Particles were even able to enter the cell nucleus, which stores the cell's genetic material."

The health dangers of microplastics are now know and while we cannot in modern society shield ourselves from all of them, we should reduce impacts of those that can be avoided. So, avoid tea bags, make a pot of tea. While not perfect, I will open up my tea bags, and simply tip hot water over them for brewing. There is probably going to be microplastics from the tea bag itself, but it will just be until the pack is finished. Then I will brew loose tea leaves.

https://www.infowars.com/posts/popular-tea-bags-release-millions-of-microplastics-into-liquid

"Microplastics have been linked to more or less all of the prevailing chronic diseases of modernity, from respiratory diseases to digestive conditions like IBS, heart disease and even neurological and behavioral conditions like autism.

More than nine billion tons of plastic are estimated to have been produced between 1950 and 2017, with over half of that total having been produced since 2004. The vast majority of plastic ends up in the environment in one form or another, where it breaks down, through weathering, exposure to UV light and organisms of all kinds, into smaller and smaller pieces—microplastics and then nanoplastics. These are "secondary" microplastics, because they start off big and end up small. "Primary" microplastics are small by design, like so-called "microbeads" used in cosmetics.

Within our homes, microplastics are mainly produced when synthetic fibres from clothes, furnishings and carpets are shed. They accumulate in large quantities in dust and float around in the air, which we then inhale."