Stapleton said she now relies more on filtered water at her home in New Jersey.
But study co-author Beizhan Yan, a Columbia environmental chemist who increased his tap water usage, pointed out that filters themselves can be a problem by introducing plastics.
I’ve been saying this to people for a long time. Here in my country, most water filters are based on charcoal and a final filtering element. That element used to be made of cellulose and other organic materials, but in the last decade, they started coming with that element made of polypropylene, until all the cellulose ones disappeared from the market. Just imagine your water passing though a porous layer of plastic, like a rigid sponge… this is a serious microplastic source.
I’m not sure how much microplastics are released in that way. It can be better than bottles, but if we used non plastic materials for so long, and it worked fine, I see no reason to put plastic in there.
Oh, man.
I’ve been saying this to people for a long time. Here in my country, most water filters are based on charcoal and a final filtering element. That element used to be made of cellulose and other organic materials, but in the last decade, they started coming with that element made of polypropylene, until all the cellulose ones disappeared from the market. Just imagine your water passing though a porous layer of plastic, like a rigid sponge… this is a serious microplastic source.
You’re talking like .01% as much plastic use per liter as plastic bottle water packs. Is that not…much much better?
I’m not sure how much microplastics are released in that way. It can be better than bottles, but if we used non plastic materials for so long, and it worked fine, I see no reason to put plastic in there.
But the filters introduce way way fewer.plastics…?