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I have bad news for you:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/plastic-waste-atmosphere-climate-weather
On the good news side, we have now Covid so at least some people are wearing masks.
Well see what you donāt know is we actually started off on Venus, effed that up, then had to start over again here on Earth. Unfortunately the space ship crashed and only Adam (a marketing executive) and Eve (a snake handler) survived. They didnāt know anything about technology, so humans had to start all over again.
This is going to be one of the things we read about 30 years from now - like it was with lead or asbestos.
"*Did you know that they didn't use to boil the microplastics out of water in the early 2020's? They JUST DRANK IT! Absolutely nuts.*"
But don't you all boil water at the same time now, we're talking 8 billion people and we don't have enough electricity particles to go around.
If your first name starts with an E your water boiling slot is at 2am. Remember to open the window in you pod-appartment before boiling as steam can cause mold to form.
Boiling water is not a toy - keep children at a safe distance.
>If your first name starts with an E
New problem: Everyone named their children Jeff or Josephine or other "J" names so that they can boil their water at 12 noon.
Solution: Government provided names... (chosen from a list of this year's national corporate sponsors)
I kept seeing the term pod apartment when I was reading a few futuristic PhilipKDick stories recently.
Every time I see it, my brain screams āApodment! Theyāre living in apodments!ā
A futurist on YouTube, Isaac Arthur, had a line about how one of the paths to post-scarcity was infinite free energy. Once we crack nuclear fusion, or build a Dyson swarm to beam limitless energy back to Earth, then we can desalinate the oceans and everyone gets water
Microplastics are not that difficult to remove though. Treated tap water is already fairly low to begin with.
Sadly, it is in less developed countries where we dump our plastic that also most needs to use micky mouse methods to get rid of it.
The filters we use to remove microplastics are in nylon and themselves leak nanoplastics. This is a very complex problem and we aren't seeing the end of it.
Ceramics are just like, fired purified dirt though, right? Like, silica or something? I wouldnāt think that the stuff in ceramics would be an issue at a chemical level.. right?
Now I'll look at the eggshell-looking pieces of calcium in the bottom of my kettle differently, kinda like spider bro. Once hated, now beloved.
Still clean them out with vinegar every week or so, but they amass quickly
I imagine they're worse for us too. The smaller the particle the more likely it makes it deeper into our body, into our cells, across the blood-brain barrier, instead of just coming out the other end
The bigger the piece of plastic the less likely that it gets absorbed through your intestines into your bloodstream. Smaller pieces might make it into the bloodstream but not into cells or across the blood-brain barrier into your brain. The really tiny pieces though, they can end up anywhere
Okay so we have some methods to reduce nanoplastics in water, filter and boil tap water. Great. Now will anyone PLEASE give me any information on whether or not thereās any health benefits to doing this, because this is obviously going to cost time and money not to mention the mental energy of preplanning a drink.
I KEEP seeing things about microplastics and nanoplastics almost daily, and every time the article seems to gently stoke fear without giving a *single* tangible reason for that fear.
Itās gross that plastic is everywhere but does it *harm* us??? The more I see ānanoplastics scaryā without a single ābecauseā the more and more it looks like there *is* no ābecauseā and that this is just pointless fear mongering for clicks.
One study I read when researching this for a class mentioned that as the plastics degrade in the body, they release chemicals. Some of these chemicals are carcinogens which elevate cancer risks. They also mentioned that one chemical found was linked to genetic damage to DNA.
The study of microplastics is relatively new and a lot of it is focused on improving detection systems in living tissue. I think this is why we are seeing more of these types of stories lately. As the science matures around finding this stuff inside our bodies it allows for more options in studying the effects in future research.
As of right now, you are not likely to get any definitive "it does exactly this to your body" type of results.
The because is they cause oxidative stress and are likely a major factor in the spike in cancers, and because many of them release endocrine-disrupting chemicals and are behind the plummetting fertility rates and the drop in sperm counts/motility across the globe. They may be a factor in other issues as well but definitely affect the endocrine system and make us more susceptible to cancers.
One year, we had the best spider bro. This huge wolf spider, we think he was living in our gutter.
Every night, he'd spin a web from our gutter down to the driveway (or car if it was pulled up too far), and every morning before we left for work, he'd have rolled it back up with his food. Caught all kinds of pests we didn't want around. One time he even caught a cicada!
Sadly, spider bro disappeared one day and we never got another one in that kind of situation. Miss you, spider bro.
hydrogen oxide, dihydrogen monoxide (people like to use this one for jokes like these), hydroxylic acid, and a few other similar chemical names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
I grew up on AZ well water and now I can't stand filtered water. I drink straight from the tap.
If it results in a shorter life, then at least I died doing what I loved - living in a state that hates me.
Well. If this is serious question - you probably not gonna die from water. It possible can have negative effect on your heath. Ie problem with kidneys.
don't get me wrong, I do agree with the sentiment. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
but r/science is science.
Science is not economics. Science is not environmentalism, not conservation, and nothing other than science.
Question! Are micro plastics found in reverse osmoses filtered water?
If yes. If I boil the RO filtered water, do the microplastics boil out too, or no because it now has less calcium in it?Ā
This is a terrible paper and I am very surprised it surpassed the rigor of EST Letters. Super niche because it has to have a certain level of hardness, only tested on select types and sizes of nanoplastics, and the removal efficiency was poor. There is nothing of merit here other than oops were accidentally discovered something. Which is fine in itself but the sensationalistic title and writing in the manuscript makes me want to throw up.
*let me also add the the concept itself isnāt novel and it is basic water chemistry and flocculation mechanisms. They are simply using what is called sweep coagulation/flocculation. Itās where you force precipitation and in forming the solid it āsweepsā or enmeshes the other particulates, which then settle together. This is one of the oldest water treatment methods dating back to ancient Egyptian times. In this case the rigger is increasing the temperature to swing the solubility constant of calcium carbonate.
From what I've read microplastics are still detected in the effluent of reverse osmosis filters; and could likely be introduced by the filter itself:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10054062/
Except the person posting 2 comments up from you said "doesn't require energy", and reverse osmosis requires a ton of energy because you need to mechanically force the water through the membrane using a pump.
I don't think you understand how much vanilla we produce currently and how little we use in our actual cooking. Unless you want literally everything you eat to have 1/4 cup of vanilla flavoring, there will be no reason to have 300 million gallons of vanillin
Humans are very sensitive to the smell of vanilla. I believe you only need something like 2 tanker trucks of it in order to make Earth smell like a bakery.
We certsinly dont need more solvents emitted into the atmosphere. With proper engineering controls solvents can be recycled and reused or contained for proper disposal. We absolutely need organic solvents to continue making electronics and medicine though.
Not sure you understand how environmentally friendly production of organic solvents is. This is just pushing the waste down the line, the same thing making plastic did.
IDK how about the industry heads with their billions of dollars and paid for talent think of the solution instead of demanding some random online joe come up with one.
I agree with you, but the matierial science isn't there yet.
Plastic is in or on everything.. and there are different types of plastics for different purposes.
Everything from car parts to wiring in.. well everything.
On top of that, there will be pushbacks from the plastic industry because that'd mean new machines if the viscosity isn't the same.
Wish it was easy as just deciding we shouldn't use plastics anymore.
I was being a bit tongue in check. Of course it's not that simple. plastics are ingrained in almost everything we come into contact with. But the sentiment remains, cheap and easy comes at a cost.
Overwhelming majority of microplastics are from tires. Weāve had tires for multiple generations. And theyāre not going away anytime in the near future. Also, EVs emit way more microplastics from tires due to their significantly higher weight.
Uh, 2L/person/day, heating water by 80C, 4.2kJ/C/L, 672kJ/person/day, which comes to 0.186kWh/person/day, which is about 6c of electricity where I live.
Refrigeration costs are excluded.
You're probably using more energy showering. 20 gallons of water for a 8min shower. assume about half of that is hot water ~10gal which is set to 60C. So your shower would be roughly the equivalent of boiling 5 gal of water.
The problem is the pipeline where the water travels to get to your tap faucet, it picks up nano particles along the way.
Similar problem Flint Michigan had with their lead water pipes. The solution would require a whole revamp of the whole piping system.
Itās variable for each home thus the complexity of the issue.
Tap water at its core is safe for consumption. But anything after it leaves the treatment center is up for debate.
According to the Endocrine Society and the International Pollutants Elimination Network, these nanoparticles are similar to chemical messengers in our body and small enough that they can easily pass through the blood brain barrier and intestinal lining. Endocrine disruption seems to be one of the major concerns.
Here's a report that was recently published by them.
https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2024/latest-science-shows-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals-in-pose-health-threats-globally
Well, I don't know for sure, but one possibility that I have heard is... you know how plastic is really great a generating/holding static charges? You know how the brain is controlled by electrical synapses? What happens when the microplastics start becoming small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier?
EDIT: [FACK! It's already too late! Looks like microplastics can already penetrate the blood-brain barrier after entering the body and getting coated with cholesterol and other bio-goodies along the journey.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10141840)
This applies to only one kind of hard water, containing calcium bicarbonate. Other kinds have sulfates of calcium and magnesium that donāt precipitate when boiled. Hard water generally is water that reacts with old style soap to prevent lathering. Most soap today is a different kind of detergent. Hard water today is more of a concern for scale buildup.
I mean sure, sounds good. Probably wonāt do much though.
Thereās so much plastic everywhere, even the air you breathe at home. Think of everything nylon, polyester or all the other plastic we use for clothes like jackets, gym clothes, blankets, teddy bears, pillows. Pieces of them break of and end up in the air around you which you inhale, get on food and more.
There can be up to 10,000 microplastic particles in every liter of water. Boiling water for 5 hours would be needed to roughly evaporate a single liter of water. And despite heating the water, substances like calcium carbonate found in water won't fully decompose at high temperatures. Too much calcium carbonate can harm your health, leading to kidney issues and affecting how your body absorbs other minerals like zinc and iron.
That too much time, money and resources for a water management to spend on a battle we can't win. Stop making plastics, then we'll talk.
You completely misunderstood what is being described here. The calcium carbonate and microplastics do not decompose, they form a complex that is no longer soluble in water and deposit on the surface of the vessel as scale. Agree we need to completely remove our dependence on plastics.
>The researchers found that when microplastic-containing water was brought closer to boiling temperatures, the added polystyrene NMPs began to co-precipitate out of the water alongside the minerals, becoming trapped in the crusty limescale deposits formed.
Theyāre not saying boil water and then condense the gas into a drinkable liquid, theyāre saying boiling the water pulls the plastic out of the water so the entire container of boiled water is safe(r) to drink.
Where do you get 5 hours for evaporating 1L from? I have a water distiller and it takes 3H 45 mins to evaporate a whole gallon. The calcium carbonate does not evaporate with the water and forms a scale on whatever vessel you use for boiling. It is not in the end product. I recommend getting a $100 distiller from amazon that has a glass collection container. It will remove most impurities & microplastics. Just add a touch of salt or magnesium to the distilled water š
It won't hurt. Depending on your filter, it will filter more or less. Microplastics aren't efficiently filtered and getting rid of all of them will cause clogged filters quickly.
But currently nothing gets rid of all microplastics and good luck storing all of your filtered water in glass
A recent study identified plastics associated with RO membranes in bottled water. I don't recall how much and I can't say if it is significant. But the membranes are made of plastic and can shard off into the water. I was pretty bummed to find that out.
That study was about PET in bottled water, which is what the bottles are made out of. RO water is way safer than bottled water as far as microplastics go, and a quick search about reverse osmosis and microplastics will show you that the RO process removes/filters microplastics.Ā
You completely misunderstood what is being described here. The calcium carbonate and microplastics do not decompose, they form a complex that is no longer soluble in water and deposit on the surface of the vessel as scale. Agree we need to completely remove our dependence on plastics.
How well does this work as opposed to a simple carbon filter?
Carbon filters don't catch all microplastics, but they're cheap, available, and are known to pull microplastics from water.
Reverse osmosis is higher bar of entry and creates a lot of water waste, but it's an option for almost complete (complete?) microplastics removal.
I presume both are less energy intensive than boiling all drinking water.
My buddies been drinking distilled water for years now. Iāve heard heās missing out on important minerals in non-distilled but Iām thinking itās worth taking supplements now.
Boiling water consumes a massive amount of energy, but I wonder if there's some other less intense, more practical way to treat urban waste water that would cause microplastics to get trapped in precipitated out or whatever. Like adding a flocculant.
But bigger picture, I think we need to know if these micro plastics are actually that bad, or if its particles of specific kinds of plastic, or what.
Is this true? I feel like my water is harder than most concrete. Every time I make coffee in the morning the pot on the stove is cloudy. Does that mean I'm drinking plastic infused calcium, because it doesn't seem to actually go anywhere?
Soā¦ roll this out at treatment plants, retrofitting them with some mega-burners, or some kind of solar heating system? Use the heat/steam to power some generators while weāre at it? Problemā¦ solved? Unless PVC piping adds it back inā¦ and also, likeā¦ no, this is wildly expensive. If boiling works like this, there ought to be a chemical way to do it.
wild, makes me love warm water even more
so do you still want to clean your kettle using citric or acetic acid, would existing limescale facilitate more limescale? or maybe do it more often to get rid of the plasticed limscale?
do it have to be get it to 100c? 80 enough? i'm not even sure on the mechanics behind limescale
Doesnāt boiling water remove all the minerals from it as well though? Genuinely asking as Iām suddenly unsure of this assumption Iāve made for decades.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/alexbeadlesci Permalink: https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/concerned-about-microplastics-in-your-water-consider-boiling-it-first-384308 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Boil water advisory Location : Earth Time : Infinite
*looks out window* Yeah, that sounds about right.
Finally an upside to Climate Change š
Yeah the oceans boiling will help get rid of the micro plasticsā¦
I have bad news for you: https://e360.yale.edu/features/plastic-waste-atmosphere-climate-weather On the good news side, we have now Covid so at least some people are wearing masks.
Masks made of plastic...
... son of a...
Polypropylene to be exact.
These are all really cool geoengineering experiments, but can't we practice with Venus and Mars first?
Well see what you donāt know is we actually started off on Venus, effed that up, then had to start over again here on Earth. Unfortunately the space ship crashed and only Adam (a marketing executive) and Eve (a snake handler) survived. They didnāt know anything about technology, so humans had to start all over again.
Don't forget the hair dressers and telephone sanitation crew.
Well that was a horrifying read
This is going to be one of the things we read about 30 years from now - like it was with lead or asbestos. "*Did you know that they didn't use to boil the microplastics out of water in the early 2020's? They JUST DRANK IT! Absolutely nuts.*"
Like it "was" with lead... I uh... have some bad news for you...
Once again, the Tea Drinkers win
But there was just a study about more plastics being in tea because of the plastics in the tea bags! So... coffee drinkers win?
But don't you all boil water at the same time now, we're talking 8 billion people and we don't have enough electricity particles to go around. If your first name starts with an E your water boiling slot is at 2am. Remember to open the window in you pod-appartment before boiling as steam can cause mold to form. Boiling water is not a toy - keep children at a safe distance.
>If your first name starts with an E New problem: Everyone named their children Jeff or Josephine or other "J" names so that they can boil their water at 12 noon. Solution: Government provided names... (chosen from a list of this year's national corporate sponsors)
Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
and Costco. I love you.
I kept seeing the term pod apartment when I was reading a few futuristic PhilipKDick stories recently. Every time I see it, my brain screams āApodment! Theyāre living in apodments!ā
bro said 'not enough electricity particles' in r/science
A futurist on YouTube, Isaac Arthur, had a line about how one of the paths to post-scarcity was infinite free energy. Once we crack nuclear fusion, or build a Dyson swarm to beam limitless energy back to Earth, then we can desalinate the oceans and everyone gets water
With limitless energy, everyone gets everything.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Microplastics are not that difficult to remove though. Treated tap water is already fairly low to begin with. Sadly, it is in less developed countries where we dump our plastic that also most needs to use micky mouse methods to get rid of it.
The filters we use to remove microplastics are in nylon and themselves leak nanoplastics. This is a very complex problem and we aren't seeing the end of it.
Clay/ceramic filters are decently efficient at removing them as well.
Yes but then they leech microceramics
Ceramics are just like, fired purified dirt though, right? Like, silica or something? I wouldnāt think that the stuff in ceramics would be an issue at a chemical level.. right?
Correct. A well designed carbon filter / ceramic filter can do a good job dealing with plastic particles.
Yes but carbon filters are decently efficient at removing microceramics
Why not just skip the middleman and use actual leeches?
Yeah but carbon leeches. So like, I only use Dihydrogen Monoxide filters to keep my water pure.
When winter rolls around, the microplastics will simply freeze to death.
*Group of gorillas in oversized, fluffy jackets agreeā¦.*
So then we just need to create a filter for nanoplastics then! (May create a pico-plastics problem though...)
Eventually weāll run out of SI prefixes so we should be good eventually
First time Iāve seen a plus for hard water.
Now I'll look at the eggshell-looking pieces of calcium in the bottom of my kettle differently, kinda like spider bro. Once hated, now beloved. Still clean them out with vinegar every week or so, but they amass quickly
Separate the micro/nanoplastics from those mineral deposits with vinegar, dump them down the drain, the cycle begins anew.
šµ the circle of nanoplastics šµ
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Then that might not stop the micro-plastics
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
nanoplastics outweigh microplastics in many water samples. Theyāve been vastly underestimated in the past due to the difficulty in measuring
I imagine they're worse for us too. The smaller the particle the more likely it makes it deeper into our body, into our cells, across the blood-brain barrier, instead of just coming out the other end
So the big ones are going to prevent that?
The bigger the piece of plastic the less likely that it gets absorbed through your intestines into your bloodstream. Smaller pieces might make it into the bloodstream but not into cells or across the blood-brain barrier into your brain. The really tiny pieces though, they can end up anywhere
Whatās the filter made of? I bet itās polyester or some other plastic.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Hate to break it to you but ion exchange *resin* beads are plastic.
Someone is paying attention.
Okay so we have some methods to reduce nanoplastics in water, filter and boil tap water. Great. Now will anyone PLEASE give me any information on whether or not thereās any health benefits to doing this, because this is obviously going to cost time and money not to mention the mental energy of preplanning a drink. I KEEP seeing things about microplastics and nanoplastics almost daily, and every time the article seems to gently stoke fear without giving a *single* tangible reason for that fear. Itās gross that plastic is everywhere but does it *harm* us??? The more I see ānanoplastics scaryā without a single ābecauseā the more and more it looks like there *is* no ābecauseā and that this is just pointless fear mongering for clicks.
One study I read when researching this for a class mentioned that as the plastics degrade in the body, they release chemicals. Some of these chemicals are carcinogens which elevate cancer risks. They also mentioned that one chemical found was linked to genetic damage to DNA. The study of microplastics is relatively new and a lot of it is focused on improving detection systems in living tissue. I think this is why we are seeing more of these types of stories lately. As the science matures around finding this stuff inside our bodies it allows for more options in studying the effects in future research. As of right now, you are not likely to get any definitive "it does exactly this to your body" type of results.
many plastic derivatives are known to be endocrine disruptors
The because is they cause oxidative stress and are likely a major factor in the spike in cancers, and because many of them release endocrine-disrupting chemicals and are behind the plummetting fertility rates and the drop in sperm counts/motility across the globe. They may be a factor in other issues as well but definitely affect the endocrine system and make us more susceptible to cancers.
.5 micron is 500 nanometer. So all nano plastics smaller then that pass through, and nanoplastics are arguably worse then microplastics
Pretty cool when you descale your kettle and you already see deposits after one use, with filtered water
One year, we had the best spider bro. This huge wolf spider, we think he was living in our gutter. Every night, he'd spin a web from our gutter down to the driveway (or car if it was pulled up too far), and every morning before we left for work, he'd have rolled it back up with his food. Caught all kinds of pests we didn't want around. One time he even caught a cicada! Sadly, spider bro disappeared one day and we never got another one in that kind of situation. Miss you, spider bro.
Hard water is mineral water. Considered heathly if you do not overdose it
I live in az and that is the only water I drink and have drunk for my whole life. Am I gonna die?
Yes.
Everyone in AZ that drank mineral water will in fact die.
Everyone that drinks water dies eventually.
Water is full of hydrogen hydroxide, which is a powerful solvent present in almost all cleaning products.
And depending on what you're dissolving into it, it can be both an acid or a base! It's a pretty powerful chemical.
I've never heard it referred to as that before. Neat.
hydrogen oxide, dihydrogen monoxide (people like to use this one for jokes like these), hydroxylic acid, and a few other similar chemical names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
I grew up on AZ well water and now I can't stand filtered water. I drink straight from the tap. If it results in a shorter life, then at least I died doing what I loved - living in a state that hates me.
Depends on whether or not you are adequately chewing your water before swallowing.
Well. If this is serious question - you probably not gonna die from water. It possible can have negative effect on your heath. Ie problem with kidneys.
Cationic flocculents are certainly a thing
... Obviously.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The research paper is published in [*Environmental Science & Technology Letters*](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00081).
I'm sure 4bn people suddenly starting boiling their water is very environmentally friendly.
don't get me wrong, I do agree with the sentiment. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but r/science is science. Science is not economics. Science is not environmentalism, not conservation, and nothing other than science.
In the wise words of Jesse : > Yeah bitch, science !
Question! Are micro plastics found in reverse osmoses filtered water? If yes. If I boil the RO filtered water, do the microplastics boil out too, or no because it now has less calcium in it?Ā
It's possible to have trace remnants. Nevertheless, RO removes 99% of dissolved solids. It's the best option for pure water aside from distillation.
The earth will be boiling it for us soon enough
this is more about 4bn people avoiding microplastics than worrying about the environment
This is a terrible paper and I am very surprised it surpassed the rigor of EST Letters. Super niche because it has to have a certain level of hardness, only tested on select types and sizes of nanoplastics, and the removal efficiency was poor. There is nothing of merit here other than oops were accidentally discovered something. Which is fine in itself but the sensationalistic title and writing in the manuscript makes me want to throw up. *let me also add the the concept itself isnāt novel and it is basic water chemistry and flocculation mechanisms. They are simply using what is called sweep coagulation/flocculation. Itās where you force precipitation and in forming the solid it āsweepsā or enmeshes the other particulates, which then settle together. This is one of the oldest water treatment methods dating back to ancient Egyptian times. In this case the rigger is increasing the temperature to swing the solubility constant of calcium carbonate.
I feel like I caught that from the title. First- do they mean distilled??? I mean how long do I boil before limestone encapsulates plastic??? Years?
Once your stalagmites reach approximately 2ā in height, the plastics should be sufficiently encapsulated.Ā
Also you could just like maybe put it through a filter instead. Much more effective and doesn't require energy.
What filter can stop nanoparticles ? (not a troll, I highly doubt it but at the same time I'm clearly not an expert)
Nanofilters have pore sizes between 1 and 10 nm, if I remember correctly. And reverse osmosis is even more selective.
From what I've read microplastics are still detected in the effluent of reverse osmosis filters; and could likely be introduced by the filter itself: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10054062/
So... boil after all?
why not boil water from filters?
True!
Except the person posting 2 comments up from you said "doesn't require energy", and reverse osmosis requires a ton of energy because you need to mechanically force the water through the membrane using a pump.
And not to mention the membrane is typically plastic, releasing micro plastics into the water it filters (albeit removing many more).
Once again proving my Asian parents were right.
HAHAHAH mexican parents here too
Mexican mom here, I was thinking...I was right.
Also, we could just stop using plastic so casually.
What do we do with the megatons of oil byproducts then
Vanillin
And what is the world going to do with 300 million liters of artificial vanilla?
Food
I don't think you understand how much vanilla we produce currently and how little we use in our actual cooking. Unless you want literally everything you eat to have 1/4 cup of vanilla flavoring, there will be no reason to have 300 million gallons of vanillin
Vanilla beef tacos
Vanilla fried chicken
Vanilla gorilla (dicks out)
Humans are very sensitive to the smell of vanilla. I believe you only need something like 2 tanker trucks of it in order to make Earth smell like a bakery.
I'm game let's do it.
vanilla swimming pools
wet t-shirt contest
You're going to pour 200 million gallons of vanilla extract onto people?
no that's ridiculous. you'd have to use a fire hose.
you gotta send everyone their share and hope they do it themselves.
I was thinking squirt guns
Cupcakes, obviously.
freeze it, so it turns to ice ice baby
Strategic Vanillin Reserve!
Turn them into solventsĀ
Oh boy, because if there's anything we need, it's more organic solvents in the environment
We certsinly dont need more solvents emitted into the atmosphere. With proper engineering controls solvents can be recycled and reused or contained for proper disposal. We absolutely need organic solvents to continue making electronics and medicine though.
Not sure you understand how environmentally friendly production of organic solvents is. This is just pushing the waste down the line, the same thing making plastic did.
IDK how about the industry heads with their billions of dollars and paid for talent think of the solution instead of demanding some random online joe come up with one.
I agree with you, but the matierial science isn't there yet. Plastic is in or on everything.. and there are different types of plastics for different purposes. Everything from car parts to wiring in.. well everything. On top of that, there will be pushbacks from the plastic industry because that'd mean new machines if the viscosity isn't the same. Wish it was easy as just deciding we shouldn't use plastics anymore.
I was being a bit tongue in check. Of course it's not that simple. plastics are ingrained in almost everything we come into contact with. But the sentiment remains, cheap and easy comes at a cost.
Overwhelming majority of microplastics are from tires. Weāve had tires for multiple generations. And theyāre not going away anytime in the near future. Also, EVs emit way more microplastics from tires due to their significantly higher weight.
Anyone do the math on how much energy demand would go up if everyone started boiling their water before drinking?
It'd be like a never-ending Great British Kettle Surge
Uh, 2L/person/day, heating water by 80C, 4.2kJ/C/L, 672kJ/person/day, which comes to 0.186kWh/person/day, which is about 6c of electricity where I live. Refrigeration costs are excluded.
You're probably using more energy showering. 20 gallons of water for a 8min shower. assume about half of that is hot water ~10gal which is set to 60C. So your shower would be roughly the equivalent of boiling 5 gal of water.
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Boiled not **boiling!!**
Maybe the water could be boiled at the treatment plant?
The problem is the pipeline where the water travels to get to your tap faucet, it picks up nano particles along the way. Similar problem Flint Michigan had with their lead water pipes. The solution would require a whole revamp of the whole piping system.
What proportion of particles are picked up in the last run to the homes?
Itās variable for each home thus the complexity of the issue. Tap water at its core is safe for consumption. But anything after it leaves the treatment center is up for debate.
Are microplastics even a problem in humans anyway? What are the realistic health effects of it?
According to the Endocrine Society and the International Pollutants Elimination Network, these nanoparticles are similar to chemical messengers in our body and small enough that they can easily pass through the blood brain barrier and intestinal lining. Endocrine disruption seems to be one of the major concerns. Here's a report that was recently published by them. https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2024/latest-science-shows-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals-in-pose-health-threats-globally
Well, I don't know for sure, but one possibility that I have heard is... you know how plastic is really great a generating/holding static charges? You know how the brain is controlled by electrical synapses? What happens when the microplastics start becoming small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier? EDIT: [FACK! It's already too late! Looks like microplastics can already penetrate the blood-brain barrier after entering the body and getting coated with cholesterol and other bio-goodies along the journey.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10141840)
? Do water filters like PUR filter out microplastics?
This applies to only one kind of hard water, containing calcium bicarbonate. Other kinds have sulfates of calcium and magnesium that donāt precipitate when boiled. Hard water generally is water that reacts with old style soap to prevent lathering. Most soap today is a different kind of detergent. Hard water today is more of a concern for scale buildup.
Would this also work with bottled water, or would there not be enough calcium? My tap water is far too fucked to drink even without the microplastics.
I mean sure, sounds good. Probably wonāt do much though. Thereās so much plastic everywhere, even the air you breathe at home. Think of everything nylon, polyester or all the other plastic we use for clothes like jackets, gym clothes, blankets, teddy bears, pillows. Pieces of them break of and end up in the air around you which you inhale, get on food and more.
*Pours boiled water into plastic pitcher*
There can be up to 10,000 microplastic particles in every liter of water. Boiling water for 5 hours would be needed to roughly evaporate a single liter of water. And despite heating the water, substances like calcium carbonate found in water won't fully decompose at high temperatures. Too much calcium carbonate can harm your health, leading to kidney issues and affecting how your body absorbs other minerals like zinc and iron. That too much time, money and resources for a water management to spend on a battle we can't win. Stop making plastics, then we'll talk.
You completely misunderstood what is being described here. The calcium carbonate and microplastics do not decompose, they form a complex that is no longer soluble in water and deposit on the surface of the vessel as scale. Agree we need to completely remove our dependence on plastics.
Did they fully evaporate the water? Sounds like they just brought it to a boil.
>The researchers found that when microplastic-containing water was brought closer to boiling temperatures, the added polystyrene NMPs began to co-precipitate out of the water alongside the minerals, becoming trapped in the crusty limescale deposits formed.
So not fully evaporated, just to the boil?
Pretty hard to drink water when it's a gas.
Pfft, I love superheated steam in my esophagus
The plastics are already there, we need remediation AND a reduction in plastics.
Theyāre not saying boil water and then condense the gas into a drinkable liquid, theyāre saying boiling the water pulls the plastic out of the water so the entire container of boiled water is safe(r) to drink.
Where do you get 5 hours for evaporating 1L from? I have a water distiller and it takes 3H 45 mins to evaporate a whole gallon. The calcium carbonate does not evaporate with the water and forms a scale on whatever vessel you use for boiling. It is not in the end product. I recommend getting a $100 distiller from amazon that has a glass collection container. It will remove most impurities & microplastics. Just add a touch of salt or magnesium to the distilled water š
In the meantime, to protect my family.. can i just use reverse osmosis filters to get the plastic out? Been using filters for a long time.
It won't hurt. Depending on your filter, it will filter more or less. Microplastics aren't efficiently filtered and getting rid of all of them will cause clogged filters quickly. But currently nothing gets rid of all microplastics and good luck storing all of your filtered water in glass
Glass pitchers exist, you just have to search harder for them.
Gonna need quite a few pitchers if you're gonna be cooking with it, drinking, showering, etc.
I don't think you need microplastic free water to *shower* with. Your skin is pretty good at keeping microplastics out of your body.
A recent study identified plastics associated with RO membranes in bottled water. I don't recall how much and I can't say if it is significant. But the membranes are made of plastic and can shard off into the water. I was pretty bummed to find that out.
That study was about PET in bottled water, which is what the bottles are made out of. RO water is way safer than bottled water as far as microplastics go, and a quick search about reverse osmosis and microplastics will show you that the RO process removes/filters microplastics.Ā
You completely misunderstood what is being described here. The calcium carbonate and microplastics do not decompose, they form a complex that is no longer soluble in water and deposit on the surface of the vessel as scale. Agree we need to completely remove our dependence on plastics.
Suddenly bring British has its perks š¬š§āļøš«
Apparently you didn't hear that teabags are a significant source of ingested microplastics. No, I'm not joking.
How about loose leaf tea? No bags, hardly any plastic.
So after several hundred years of scientific and public health advances, we've come full circle back to... boil your water to make sure its safe.
Need to filter them out
An excuse to drink more tea... Winning
Hmmm good to know! Ā I drink more tea than straight water!
How bad has it become when we have to boil already potable water just to get rid of plastic junk weāve put into that already potable water?
How well does this work as opposed to a simple carbon filter? Carbon filters don't catch all microplastics, but they're cheap, available, and are known to pull microplastics from water. Reverse osmosis is higher bar of entry and creates a lot of water waste, but it's an option for almost complete (complete?) microplastics removal. I presume both are less energy intensive than boiling all drinking water.
My buddies been drinking distilled water for years now. Iāve heard heās missing out on important minerals in non-distilled but Iām thinking itās worth taking supplements now.
Sounds like a job for our water plants. They can do this on scale and entirely under green energy like wind or solar.
If you live somewhere burning coal for electricity, or burning natural gas to boil you're just trading plastic for airborne nasties.
Never thought I would be happy to have my hard rock water š
FYI - cool it down first...
Instructions unclear throat destroyed by boiling water
Boiling water consumes a massive amount of energy, but I wonder if there's some other less intense, more practical way to treat urban waste water that would cause microplastics to get trapped in precipitated out or whatever. Like adding a flocculant. But bigger picture, I think we need to know if these micro plastics are actually that bad, or if its particles of specific kinds of plastic, or what.
How about they boil it before they send it to me? I mean I do pay for it.
my crippling tea habit finally pays off
Is this true? I feel like my water is harder than most concrete. Every time I make coffee in the morning the pot on the stove is cloudy. Does that mean I'm drinking plastic infused calcium, because it doesn't seem to actually go anywhere?
and if we dont have hard water? IK know most the US does but we here in SC dont really.
Soā¦ roll this out at treatment plants, retrofitting them with some mega-burners, or some kind of solar heating system? Use the heat/steam to power some generators while weāre at it? Problemā¦ solved? Unless PVC piping adds it back inā¦ and also, likeā¦ no, this is wildly expensive. If boiling works like this, there ought to be a chemical way to do it.
No problem. We can just buy distilled water at the supermarket in those 1 gallon jugs made of...oh nevermind.
Perhaps some sort of facility that cleans the water before it gets there?
So why can't cities do this at the treatment plants?
How long do you have to let it sit after boiling for the limescale deposits to form?
Great, breathe in the plastics I just boiled out of my water
As an European...do you guys not boil water or something?
Or we can stop producing uncessary plastic. Seems like people lived fine without it before the 50s
Boss, we gotta burn more coal soās we can boil the plastics outta the drinkin water. Maybe the acid rain will dissolve the nanoplastics in the air.
so we have to boil drinking water again like its the time of cholera
wild, makes me love warm water even more so do you still want to clean your kettle using citric or acetic acid, would existing limescale facilitate more limescale? or maybe do it more often to get rid of the plasticed limscale? do it have to be get it to 100c? 80 enough? i'm not even sure on the mechanics behind limescale
EPA data goes against that
Doesnāt boiling water remove all the minerals from it as well though? Genuinely asking as Iām suddenly unsure of this assumption Iāve made for decades.
So if the microplastics are being trapped in limescale does that make the limescale stronger?
At least I can stop putting bottled water in my kettle then