愛喝袋泡茶的人注意了,你喝進去的是微塑料!
Every time you use a tea bag, you could be dosing yourself with billions of microplastic and nanoplastic particles. That's the conclusion of researchers at McGill University in Montreal.
每次喝袋泡茶時，你可能喝進去的是數十億微塑料和納米塑料顆粒。這是蒙特利爾的麥吉爾大學研究人員得出的結論。The research, published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology, centred on four different types of plastic mesh tea bags, of the kind recently preferred by some premium brands. Having been emptied of the tea itself, the bags were placed in water heated to 95C.
發表在美國化學學會期刊《環境科學與技術》上的這項研究聚焦於四種不同的塑料網眼茶袋，是一些優質品牌近來喜歡使用的那種茶袋。研究人員將茶袋裏的碎茶取出，將茶袋放入加熱至95攝氏度的水中。Researchers were surprised to find each bag released around 11.6 billion microplastics and a further 3.1 billion even smaller nanoplastics. These levels were, says the report, "thousands of times higher than plastic loads previously reported in other foods".
研究人員驚訝地發現，每個茶袋釋放出大約116億個微塑料和31億個更微小的納米塑料。報告稱，這一水平“比先前報道過的其他食物塑料含量高出數千倍”。
Microplastics are any plastic debris less than 5mm in length, while nanoplastics are less than 100 nanometers. (A nanometer, or nm, is a millionth of a millimeter; for comparison, a human hair is about 75,000nm thick.)
微塑料是長度小於5毫米的塑料微粒，而納米塑料是長度小於100毫微米的塑料微粒。（1毫微米等於1毫米的100萬分之一；比如，人類的一根頭髮粗細大約是7.5萬毫微米。）Primary microplastics tend to come from manufacturing and packing, but can also come from clothing fibres or microbeads: sub-1mm particles added to cosmetics as exfoliating agents and pharmaceutical drugs to make them easier to swallow.
微塑料主要來源於製造業和包裝業，但也來自服裝纖維或微珠——小於1毫米的顆粒，可以添加在化妝品中用來去角質，或者加入藥品中使其更容易被吞嚥。
In addition, most plastic will degrade via chemical or physical processes over time, and 'secondary' microplastics are created when larger fragments degrade to below 5mm. This type of disintegration is implicated in the tea bag research, with the McGill team suggesting that the near-boiling water could be releasing more into beverages. The average European consumes 0.8kg of tea per year, according to Statista in 2019, creating a market worth an annual $22.3m.
此外，隨着時間流逝，大多數塑料都會通過化學或物理過程發生降解，當大塊塑料分解成5毫米以下的碎片時，就產生了“二級”微塑料。這項茶袋研究就與這種分解過程有關。麥吉爾大學的研究團隊指出，接近沸騰的水可能會使茶袋在茶水裏釋放更多微塑料。2019年統計網站Statista的數據顯示，歐洲人平均每年攝入0.8千克的茶葉，每年的市場價值達2230萬美元（約合人民幣1.6億元）。Although microplastics are recognized as an environmental problem - their size means they easily wash into the hydrological system and food chain - and they have previously been detected in tap water, bottled water and some foods, not much is known about the possible health effects to humans of ingesting microplastics. The World Health Organization has suggested particles in drinking water do not seem to pose a risk, but that their findings are based on "limited information" and that far more research is required.
儘管微塑料被視爲一種環境問題——微小的體積意味着它們很容易就會被沖洗到水文系統和食物鏈中——過去也曾在自來水、瓶裝水和一些食物中檢測到微塑料——但是科學家對於人類攝入微塑料對健康帶來的影響知之甚少。世界衛生組織指出，飲用水中的微塑料似乎不會對人體造成危害，但是他們的發現基於“有限的信息”，還需要進一步的研究。The McGill team tested the effect of the released tea bag particles on tiny water fleas, which are often used as model organisms in environmental studies. Given various doses of the tea-bag microplastics, the fleas exhibited anatomical malformations and behavioural abnormalities.
麥吉爾大學的研究團隊檢測了茶袋釋放出的微塑料對微小的水蚤的影響，水蚤經常在環境研究中被作爲模式生物。在接觸到多個茶袋釋放出的微塑料後，水蚤表現出瞭解剖畸形和行爲異常。The scientists note that more research is needed to determine whether the plastics' effect on humans is negligible, subtle - or chronic.
科學家指出，還需要進行更多研究才能確定微塑料對人類的影響是可以忽略的、微妙的還是長遠的。
