It’s quite striking, really—this glass looks oddly like plastic.
Microplastics are ubiquitous—found in everything from chewing gum to beauty products, and even your go-to junk food.
It makes sense to think you’d mostly find them in items with obvious plastic components.
However, a recent study published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis suggests otherwise.
Guillaume Duflos, a Research Director at the French Food Safety Monitoring Agency, ANSES, shared with AFP that their team set out to explore the microplastic content in various drinks available in France, while also examining how different types of containers could affect this.
What they found was quite unexpected. They discovered that beverages in glass bottles—like lemonade, iced tea, beer, and soda—contain 5 to 50 times more microplastics than those in plastic or metal containers.
Co-author Iseline Chaib mentioned to AFP that they were actually “hoping for the opposite outcome.”
The researchers found an average of around 100 microplastic particles per liter in these glass bottles, which were consistent with the paint on the bottle caps.
“We observed that the particles identified from the glass bore the same shape, color, and polymer makeup as the paint sealing the glass,” they noted.
They speculated that tiny, barely visible scratches from the friction of the caps might be releasing particles onto the surface of the cap itself.
Yet, some aspects of their findings remain puzzling.
They detected only 1.6 particles per liter in both glass and plastic bottles, which is quite low.
Interestingly, wine bottles showed minimal microplastic content, even when sealed.
In contrast, various drinks like beer, lemonade, and soft drinks had levels of 60, 40, and 30 microplastics per liter, respectively.
Duflos acknowledged that they don’t yet have an explanation for this discrepancy.
While the complete health effects of microplastics are still not fully understood, studies have connected them to multiple health issues, including inflammation, hormone disruption, DNA damage, respiratory problems, heart issues, and some forms of cancer.
As a straightforward solution, ANSES recommends removing the cap and rinsing with water and alcohol to mitigate plastic pollution by up to 60%.
