Plastic Tea Bags Update: How To Avoid Harmful Release

Some tea bags release billions of tiny plastic particles when immersed in hot water, creating tea that can harm your health and increase your risk of cancer—but not all tea is equally as dangerous.

Recent research from the Independent University of Barcelona (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB), Spain, uncovered the potential effects of several different tea bags on human cells.

The scientists found that some tea bags released approximately 1.2 billion particles of plastic into each drop—or milliliter—of tea when brewed in hot water.

“We are exposed everywhere to micro-nanoplastics,” Ricardo Marcos Dauder, one of the study’s authors from UAB, previously told Newsweek.

“We don’t need to be in special conditions, in special places to be exposed. Something as simple as preparing a cup of tea is enough to ingest, every time that you drink a cup of tea, millions or more nanoparticles or nanoplastics.”

What Is the Safest Way To Drink Tea?

Some tea bags are better than others if you want to avoid ingesting plastic. The tea bags studied by the Barcelona scientists contained polypropylene, cellulose and nylon, but there are many tea bags in stores which are plastic free.

To work out whether your tea bags are free from plastics, check the packaging. Plastic-free brands are likely to use this in their marketing, so check for labels such as “plastic-free,” “biodegradable” and “compostable.”

If the box says “PP” (meaning polypropene), “PET” (meaning polyethylene terephthalate) or “nylon,” that means the tea bags contain plastic.

Another way to avoid plastic from tea is to switch to loose-leaf tea and a plastic-free tea strainer, such as those made from stainless steel.

Why Are Microplastics Dangerous?

Items made with plastic can break down and release tiny plastic particles, especially under certain conditions, such as when that plastic is exposed to heat or scraped.

Professor Chris Elliott, the Chair of Food Safety at Queen’s University Belfast, told Newsweek: “The evidence of human exposure to micro and nanoplastics (NMPs) from a wide variety of food and beverage sources is mounting and will continue to do so as more potential sources are investigating.

“To identify tea bags as a ‘high risk’ item that needs particular attention is far from certain, but we all need to be aware that we will read many more such stories about our exposure to NMPs and the associated adverse health impacts.”

Plastics release chemicals called endocrine disruptors which are believed to disrupt human hormones and increase the risk of certain cancers.

The Barcelona study exposed the tiny plastic particles to human intestinal cells and found they were absorbed in large amounts by digestive cells that produce mucus, even making their way into the cells’ nuclei, where the DNA is kept.

Dauder previously told Newsweek that nanoplastics could disrupt the mitochondria, the “energy factory” of each cell, and our DNA in the cell nucleus.

“Carcinogenesis is really related to genotoxicity, or to damage to the DNA,” he said, adding that these tiny plastic particles could easily “cross biological barriers” from the intestines into the blood and affect different organs.

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Reference

Banaei, G., Abass, D., Tavakolpournegari, A., Martín-Pérez, J., Gutiérrez, J., Peng, G., Reemtsma, T., Marc, R., Hernández, A., García-Rodríguez, A. (2024). Teabag-derived micro/nanoplastics (true-to-life MNPLs) as a surrogate for real-life exposure escenaris, Chemosphere, 368 (143736). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.143736