"A rapid-screening approach to detect and quantify microplastics based on fluorescent tagging with Nile Red"

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44501

I was wondering the same thing. I saw an article yesterday about scientists just discovering that tea bags release billions of micro and nano particles.

the tea bags are a new plastic mesh kind, currently from a small handful of manufacturers.

The PET and nylon tea bags tend to be pyramid shaped.

From the BBC >This is usually so that the tea bag is held in a pyramid shape, which producers claim helps the tea leaves infuse better.

Wasn't it pretty much every large tea manufacturer in the UK though? I definitely got the impression that it's very widespread.

I got the sense it was the nylon bagged tea that had the issue, and they are comparatively rare in the UK. Yet many paper tea bags have tiny amounts of plastic based glue. No idea if that's enough to be feeding us microplastics, or relative quantity to plastic ones.

It's one of those things that having found surprising amounts somewhere, we're going to spend the coming years finding surprising amounts everywhere.

Bit like the chap who ended up finding lead from petrol everywhere on every researcher and clean surface in his lab, invented the clean room, and started finding it up mountains etc.

You mean like any kind of hot tea in pyramid bags that you get from Starbucks?

I wonder how much people are drinking those teas.

know I have