Slashdot Mirror
Microplastics Found In 90 Percent of Table Salt (nationalgeographic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from National Geographic: New research shows microplastics in 90 percent of the table salt brands sampled worldwide. Of 39 salt brands tested, 36 had microplastics in them, according to a new analysis by researchers in South Korea and Greenpeace East Asia. Salt samples from 21 countries in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia were analyzed. The three brands that did not contain microplastics are from Taiwan (refined sea salt), China (refined rock salt), and France (unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation). The study was published this month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The density of microplastics found in salt varied dramatically among different brands, but those from Asian brands were especially high, the study found. The highest quantities of microplastics were found in salt sold in Indonesia. Asia is a hot spot for plastic pollution, and Indonesia -- with 34,000 miles (54,720 km) of coastline -- ranked in an unrelated 2015 study as suffering the second-worst level of plastic pollution in the world. In another indicator of the geographic density of plastic pollution, microplastics levels were highest in sea salt, followed by lake salt and then rock salt. Even though the study found that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt, it's not clear what the health consequences are.
The density of microplastics found in salt varied dramatically among different brands, but those from Asian brands were especially high, the study found. The highest quantities of microplastics were found in salt sold in Indonesia. Asia is a hot spot for plastic pollution, and Indonesia -- with 34,000 miles (54,720 km) of coastline -- ranked in an unrelated 2015 study as suffering the second-worst level of plastic pollution in the world. In another indicator of the geographic density of plastic pollution, microplastics levels were highest in sea salt, followed by lake salt and then rock salt. Even though the study found that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt, it's not clear what the health consequences are.
Salt is bad for you!
Are you fucking kidding us? Look at the cancer rates. Look at the autism rates. Look at the obesity rates. Look at the orange Pinochio. Jebus.
Are there any health implications of micro plastics in salt? That was suspiciously left out of the article for some reason.
Nothing about that. Microplastics could be nanograms or milligrams, and that is a massive difference.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The study with its summary was linked in the submission:
A wide range of MP content (in number of MPs per kg of salt; n/kg) was found: 0–1674 n/kg (excluding one outlier of 13629 n/kg) in sea salts, 0–148 n/kg in rock salt, and 28–462 n/kg in lake salt.
A lot of salts these days come with their own plastic grinder container. I noticed the grinders in those things shard off small pieces of plastic. So what I do is slice open the container with a knife and pour it into something else.
My parents do a lot of cheese making so they often give me obscure salts like Himalayan pink salt and stuff so that's why.
It might not necessarily be from the ocean or salt collection itself; could just be part of processing that is adding the micro plastic.
I know enough to not take a dump on my dinner plate before I eat my supper, so yes.
Yeah, again that's the number of particles, but 1000 particles each 100nm in diameter is a LOT less material than 100 particles each 100um in diameter. If I told you that the lethal dosage of some chemical was 17 grams, and you just drank liquid with 44 in it - wouldn't you want to know if I was talking grams, mg, ug, or some other unit?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
....I take a steaming dump on you FACE, if only to IMPROVE it?
Dose? Concentration? Nothing about that.
The microplastic beads in the study are in the range of 1.7 - 30.6 nano meters in length, and has a listing of particles per kilogram of salt tested that differs by salt type:
0-1674 n/kg (excluding one outlier of 13â629 n/kg) in sea salts, 0-148 n/kg in rock salt, and 28-462 n/kg in lake salt.
The link to the abstract was given in the same place as the rest of the words you read about it, and that abstract links to the published study that answers your questions, so there's no reason for me to re-post it here.
The extra salt or the extra plastic?
Sorry, I cannot read the source report since it's paywalled. And I still don't get it - a bead with a length but not diameter or width and depth? And a range of over an order of magnitude, why not just list the mass rather than a single dimension of a 3 dimensional object, that can have a large range of densities?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Dosage measured in mass is relevant for contaminants that dissolve at the molecular level, but plastic presumably doesn't readily dissolve. We don't really know what the toxicity mechanism is. Maybe it slightly dissolves and the damage is proportional to the total surface area of the particles. Maybe the damage is mechanical (particles get stuck somewhere) and proportional to the number of particles.
...with a grain of salt!
Some plastics - ABS, PVDF, CPVC - will dissolve in hydrochloric (stomach) acid. So dosage would matter.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If if and if.
But currently it's a buzz word with no known (good, bad or ugly) health implications. Also, what's the dosage from fish? Beef? Tap water?
For plastics that don't dissolve in the stomach, particle size could matter greatly. For those that do, the bigger concern is what they break down into and if that's toxic.
The article is horrible...i thought NatGeo was better than this kind of fear-mongering faux-science crap. The study I'm even less interested in given who it's authored by. Greenpeace is among the top-tier nonsense media out there.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
One would think that rock salts pulled from underground would have the least amount if any microplastics in them since the salt was developed underground long before plastics ever existed. If there are still microplastics in rock salt, one would have to assume it is coming from however it is being processed after being brought into the factories that package it.
I myself still prefer sea salts, rock salts just have a weird taste to them after having used sea salt for awhile. Almost a chemical taste, this is even non-iodized rock salt that i have tried that just tastes off.
You can guarantee that cooking pretty much anything is gonna dissolve the microplastics you add to it.
If you read the abstract of the original paper the typical amount found was on the order of 100 nanograms in 1Kg of salt. To put that in perspective that is 1e-10. That is .00000000001 of a kg. There is probably that amount of pretty much anything you can think of in a kilo of salt. Will it do any harm? Extremely unlikely. This focus on micro plastics is weird. It is meaningless FUD.
There are a few more brands of salt sold world-wide than "39", so to say that's 90% of all table salt? Not even close.
I for one couldn't help but notice that here we get mined salt, and I'd be very surprised indeed if there's microplastic in that.
Bill Burr on the subject. Watch the whole video if you want to hear his take on Steve Jobs.
"...it's not clear what the health consequences are."
So about a tenth as much as the uranium salts in it eh?
Microplastic beads where removed from toothpaste a few years ago because they where found that they where embedding themselves in between your teeth and gums and becoming nucleation sites for bacteria causing gum disease. The plastics where initially added as an enamel safe abrasive to remove more plaque, but the law of unintended consequences of allowing the marketing team drive the ship caused people to lose their teeth. Because anyone with functioning brain cells would have figured that this was a possibility and liability before the project got off the drawing board.
Sorry, I cannot read the source report since it's paywalled. And I still don't get it - a bead with a length but not diameter or width and depth? And a range of over an order of magnitude, why not just list the mass rather than a single dimension of a 3 dimensional object, that can have a large range of densities?
It's generally either the length or diameter, whichever is larger.
But yes, "microplastics" is a unit of size, defined as less than 5mm on its longest dimension.
There is no actual minimum specified, I assume because when the term was made we couldn't make anything smaller. I'm not sure we can intentionally do so still, however small particles can decay into many more even smaller particles so there probably needs to be another term for them.
The microplastic term is one of those things similar to "shortwave radio". Since named there are many bands usable with shorter wave lengths than shortwave, but that was the name given and understood as a specific frequency range.
I'd say it's for historical purposes if not for the fact the term is only a bit over a decade old.
The reason for no mass specified is two fold.
One is that "microplastic" is a unit of size, not a type of plastic.
There are millions of different formulas of plastics each with unique properties including density and mass.
It's akin to asking "what is the mass of plastic" specifically referring to all plastics and not one type, or asking "how many pins to integrated circuit have" which is also a value that can range from one to many hundreds.
Two is that the methods used to measure it aren't precise enough to determine the type, and is taken as a given that the sample has hundreds or more different types of plastic all sluried together in a mix.
We're still talking hundreds to a thousands particles per kilogram of sample. Comparing two exceptionally tiny fractional values needing to be specified in exponential notation is probably going to confuse more people than it would help.
Wikipedia has a section listing the density of about a dozen different types of microplastics that are known to cause problems with fish:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics#Buoyancy
But with millions of types of plastic that can exist at this size, I don't think you'll find any sort of comprehensive listing.
Also sorry about the paywall thing, I hadn't noticed it. If you're interested in the paper at all, this may prove helpful: https://sci-hub.se/10.1021/acs...
Want some idea of what the upper bound is by size volume
Take a Table Spoon of salt (15 ml) dissolve thoroughly in a cup of water in a good quality glass (pref overnight)
give it a shake
Hold up to sunlight.
The Tyndall effect will let you see suspended particles in the solution.
If you want more you can take out your handy dandy 20 micron filter (That's a coffee filter)
filter the solution through it.
See whats left behind.
Bonus points do this with whatever water you plan to use without the salt, to establish a baseline.
I'll guess you have something other than plastic in your salt to be angry about when you are done.
Together with contraception that simulates pregancy. You know: That time when women become unbearable assholes and emotional wrecks because their hormones go haywire. Especially estrogen.
Real men use RISUG (next generation after VasalGel). No pregnancies, no aggro "womyn", lasts 10 years, takes literally just 1 injection to enable it, and 1 to completely reverse it.
If if and if.
But currently it's a buzz word with no known (good, bad or ugly) health implications. Also, what's the dosage from fish? Beef? Tap water?
For plastics that don't dissolve in the stomach, particle size could matter greatly. For those that do, the bigger concern is what they break down into and if that's toxic.
The article is horrible...i thought NatGeo was better than this kind of fear-mongering faux-science crap. The study I'm even less interested in given who it's authored by. Greenpeace is among the top-tier nonsense media out there.
NatGeo is now run by Rupert and company. Might as well watch Fox news and listen to the Orange Chimp. The real environmental concerns about micro plastics is: what they are slowly in human terms doing, but quickly in evolutionary terms to the oceans food web. Thus the largest protein producing system on the planet. We as humans are at the top entire planet's food web and are consuming increasing amounts of the chemical byproducts of the plastics we pretend to recycle by dumping them in the oceans.
The by products of some of the most nasty polymers in plastics are slowly increasing in the tissues of all ocean organisms world wide.
I know this because my sister does analytical chemistry for a firm that is contracted by both governments and industry. She is not allowed to discuss what she sees. But she became a vegan a few years back and admits that some of the findings are kept under wraps and not allowed to be discussed at the threat of the termination of her employment. Put it this way the scientists that are hired to spin doctor the results are also in the employ of major corporation especially the big wheels in the petro chemical industry. This is the real story here, along with the phony recycling industry that pays cheap crooked shipping companies to transport our plastic wastes to Asia for so called "feel good recycling".
They're talking about microplastics. If the term is used correctly, those are 5 micrometers and smaller particles. Your confusion comes from the clickbait part, where the attempts to conflate microplastics with plastic garbage in the oceans are made. Which are completely distinct and separate issues.
AFAIK, there is still no proof that there's any observable harm in microplastics. As far as the initial study claimed, those are biologically inert and too small to have mechanical impact. This could change in the future as people are studying them closely now, but the studies that are coming out all seem to avoid the topic completely. Instead they are used by clickbaity media people to conflate plastic garbage problems in the oceans with the problem of microplastics.
So the only problem they could observe is slightly increased buoyancy for fish when you're talking about grams in cubic centimetre, so incredibly high concentrations far beyond this study?
Does that confirm that there are no problems like those observed with plastic garbage, i.e. mechanical damage to digestive system and thorax?
The present study is based on the hypothesis that commercial sea salts can act as an indicator of MP pollution in the surrounding environment unless the MPs are filtered out during the manufacturing process.
The paper speaks of testing commercial table salt vendor products, and correlating the concentration of 'microplastics' to industrial sources. That's a limited scope, and respectable.
I still would like to look into the details of the 'microparticle' counting. Particle counting accuracy is hugely dependent on measurement technique. Add differentiation from other 'particles' to that challenge? I'd like to see details. Paywall though.
DANGER! There is all kinds of shit in sea water!
If I could just find the list of salts with microplastics there might be a hit and I can get my hippie girlfriend off the awfully overpriced stuff she wants.
Because salt is mildly abrasive, and they are packaging it in plastic containers?
On the downside your salt contains microplastics. On the plus side, if you consume enough you might grow a magnificent pair of tits.
Microplastics are a good anti-caking agent in salt.
100 nanograms in 1Kg of salt. To put that in perspective that is 1e-10.
nano = 10^-9
100 nano = 10^-7
Are there any health implications of micro plastics in salt? That was suspiciously left out of the article for some reason.
What's suspicious about it? The answer is they have no fucking clue what the health implications (if any) are. Neither does anyone else at this point. Why would they make claims about health implications when there is a good approximation of zero data regarding the effect of microplastic on health? We know it isn't acutely toxic but beyond that a lot of research is going to have to be done to figure out if/how/why it is a problem and even more research to figure out what to do about it if it actually is a health risk.
How long until someone tries to introduce the term "essential dietary microplastics"?
Looking at the time of your post I'd say Friday October 19, 2018 @ 12:36AM is when it will happen.
It will increase neuronal plasticity.
It contains the dreaded microplastics
If 90% of table salt people are using all the time has microplastics in it, then it clearly has no negative health effects, or else with such a massive experimental group, we'd have seen negative results already. :)
No, all that proves is that whatever effects there might be are not acutely toxic. It's quite possible there may be long term effects or mild effects or effects that only impact a portion of the population or perhaps no impact at all. We just don't know at this point. It's not unusual at all for mild chemical pollution (which this is) to have health implications that are not noticed for some time. Right now we have essentially no clue if these things will actually be harmful but we would be foolish not to take the possibility seriously. Becoming aware of the presence of a potential problem is the first step in dealing with it. We are just recently becoming aware there may be a serious issue and that further research is warranted.
Nothing about that. Microplastics could be nanograms or milligrams, and that is a massive difference.
It is a difference but it's unclear what effect such a difference might actually have. Once a toxicity threshold is reached the difference becomes to some degree academic. If nanograms of some substance is significantly toxic it doesn't really matter if there are milligrams present because you have the same problem either way. Drowning in an inch of water renders you just as dead as drowning in an ocean if you get what I'm saying. The problem is that we don't know what a safe amount is at this point. Could be a lot or could be very little and we don't even know if there are measurable health effects just yet.
Asia is a hot spot for plastic pollution, and Indonesia -- with 34,000 miles (54,720 km) of coastline -- ranked in an unrelated 2015 study as suffering the second-worst level of plastic pollution in the world.
That must mean ... something bad about Americans, somehow!
(Well, Americans who aren't me, that is ... I'm magically except from my anti-American rants)
A lot of salts these days come with their own plastic grinder container. I noticed the grinders in those things shard off small pieces of plastic. So what I do is slice open the container with a knife and pour it into something else.
I never really understood what the point of grinding salt tableside is other than being a pretentious twat. Total waste of time and money. We grind pepper because it has a flavor impact (peppercorns are a fruit and once ground some of the aromatics evaporate) but there is no meaningful effect on salt which is just a rock. There is essentially no culinary advantage to grinding your salt in a cheap plastic disposable grinder and it wastes money on an unnecessary activity.
Redmond brand salt is mined from an ancient underground deposit. Sold in a plastic container. The company uses the sea salt in promoting the product as a better alternative. You be the judge. realsalt.com
"...Even though the study found that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt, it's not clear what the health consequences are."
Nor will it ever be made clear. US Capitalism will ensure profit is always prioritized over health, particularly when sickness and disease generates trillions for the Medical Industrial Complex. Deaths also help cull the population. Double bonus!
Ironically, hospitals are also a rather massive contributor to this pollution problem too.
Were the microplastics in the environment, or did they come from the manufacturing/production process? Is it a mix? If so, what's the ratio?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You're a fucking AC. Your anecdote about your 'sister' and her laurels is meaningless.
There's one thing plastics do really, really well, even in small doses. Especially in fetal and juvenile mammals, they act like female hormones when they break down.
The fact that they're now found everywhere in the environment and there has been no serious effort to control this situation should be a lot more than just a mild cause for concern.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
A nanogram is a billionth of a gram. There might be 100 nanograms of plastic in a kilogram of salt according to the scientific paper behind this article. How is this level of contamination, at the nanogram or 100 nanogram (typical) level even a concern? This is probably even far below the normal level of dust in clean air. Human bodies are well adapted to handle this level of contamination in our environment. The human body's systems and biochemical pathways have filters and other mechanisms to remove this level of contamination on a routine basis. This is true for virtually all life forms. Also, "plastic" is most likely polyethylene, polystyrene, or similar simple hydrocarbons. At the level of nanogram sizes these would hardly be polymers, but almost bits of ethylene or styrene. These are NOT toxic compounds. I'm the first person to agree that there is far too much plastic being used on the planet today but these amounts of contamination at nanogram or at best sub microgram levels are not higher than thousands of other contaminants in salt, air, water, or just on your fingers at any given moment. Many of those are more toxic than ethylene. In salt these detected levels of micro plastics are orders of magnitude lower than the anti-caking agents put in salt (.01% maximum by law), or the iodine added to salt for health benefits (0.002% to 0.004%). The micro plastics in the article are at ~.0000001% for comparison according to the original paper referenced by the article. If you are going to worry about this you should go live in a clean room, but even in highest level microchip manufacturing facilities, arguably the cleanest places on Earth you might get this level of contamination. So where can you go to get away from these dreaded contaminants? Space? I bet there are nanogram levels of "dust" in space as well, including ethylene and styrene. This is a non-issue. In fact, given the amount of natural oil seeps and countless simple hydrocarbon sources on this planet, there's probably that much ethylene and styrene in the natural environment without even humans doing anything. For instance, when fruit and vegetables ripen they gives off a lot of ethylene. You are surrounded by these molecules anyway, whether they are in "micro plastics" or other sources. I cannot believe the focus on this total non-problem. As other posters have said: it's more about click-bait than reality.
99.99999% sounds good unless it's in everything I ingest. Then it's possible for it to become an issue. More so if the contaminant is something that accumulates. There's all sorts of nasty things like lead and mercury that can be a probably at ridiculously small doses because of that.
Not saying "Everybody Panic!" but it does warrant further study.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
yes, given enough time your body will break down. But a few things
a) Cancer isn't the default killer, heart failure is. Sorta. Lots of folks make it until their 100s without cancer. They're effectively immune. They die of heart failure. You're right it's one or the other though.
b) Just because something will eventually kill us doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop things that will kill us sooner.
c) If you can't fathom how Microplastics would cause issues go look up the "wonder material" that is asbestos.
d) the trouble with being an expert in one field is it can make you feel like an expert in _all_ fields. I'm a pretty good JavaScript programmer but you wouldn't want me doing your differential calculations. OTOH I probably wouldn't put you in charge of a large scale website's code base. Now, if I spent 8 years learning math and you spent 8 years learning web programming we could switch places, but we'd have to put the work in first.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it was a study to prove microplastics were there, not the health impacts. Asking for a paper on the presence of microplastics to comment on their effects is not ho science works. That's like saying there's something suspicious about /. because there's no articles monetary policy. Ok... given what the mods have been greenlighting lately maybe that's a bad example :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Since climate change is getting rather long in the tooth to spur protest, microplastics (note, not just "plastic") is a new battle cry. 99.9999 percent pure has got to be better than 99.96% of your air is not CO2, right?
Yes you COULD live in a laboratory clean bubble that would ironicly be made of plastic for the rest of your life and be "Safe."
But you wouldn't enjoy life at all.
Plastic is the new lead.
They mention in the article the three brands that did not contain microplastics are from Taiwan (refined sea salt), China (refined rock salt), and France (unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation).
I've traditionally used salt from the French producer La Baleine because it's tastier than Morton's, the largest brand.
I'd love to know that on top of flavor, I'm also getting a healthier product.
Sigh.
Cancer's what you die of if you don't die of anything else. Sure there are things that increase your chances of cancer (i.e. shit that kills you faster), but cancer rates increasing means nothing - it means you didn't die of all the other stuff, basically.
Obesity rates are to do an overabundance of food and a lack of self-control. Grown adults filling fridges full of crap. You want to find the cause of that, open your own fridge.
What microplastics would have to do with any of them, I wouldn't be able to fathom. But, hey, I just have a degree in maths and can read papers and statistics properly.
I'll keep it brief - both of these points are utter bullshit. Cancer rates increasing means nothing? They are a modern disease. As is obesity. There is not a scientist worth his microplastic-laden salt that would say obesity is because of an overabundance of food and self-control. There are ZERO scientific studies that support these knee-jerk 'theories'.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You're a fucking AC. Your anecdote about your 'sister' and her laurels is meaningless.
Yes an AC by choice in this case. However the facts are the facts and the morons who still preach, "the solution to pollution is dilution" bullshit are also the same bunch of fucking paid morons with (sudo)... har har credentials that work as shills for the petro chemical industries.
Here is the real problem, unless you look at the earth as a system that will be effected long term by our chemical choices, including the rapid increase in carbon dioxide in the lower density sphere, the rapid increase in the amounts of all the man made particulate in suspension in the oceans and admit that there might be consequences that will be detrimental to life as a whole on this planet caused by our greed and stupidity: then sitting back and taking pot shots at those who pose these questions is about as smart as a FUCKING TRUMP TWEET POT SHOT.
"Microplastics (referenced correctly by name in this one) are harmless. They are biologically inert and mechanically harmless. They're so small, they're able to travel through the cell walls, and as a result, have no meaningful mechanical impact as far as we know." -Luckyo
For plastics that don't dissolve in the stomach, particle size could matter greatly.
Especially if they can pass into the blood stream where they could clog your kidneys or who knows what.
Microplastics are in salt mined from deposits deep underground? That's really surprising and hard to believe. Even if they were of natural origin that salt was deposited there millions of years ago and plastics usually don't last that long.
This study might need replication and checks for contamination.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It keeps the salt vampires away, because the microplastics are lethal to them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Good work asking questions that nobody can answer.
If you actually gave a shit and weren't just posting early in hopes of mod points.... Pick up the NoSalt container, dial the 888 number. Ask them if their product is a byproduct of desalination.
Now we know why your micro-dick cum is so tasteless.
There is a brand of salt called "Redmand's Real Salt" that comes from a underground salt mine in Central Utah from a ancient and now evaporated inland sea. I would wager it is likely plastic free. It is also quite delicious as far salts go. And if that isn't salty enough for you, fuck off!
Salt can experience lot more temperatures, than micro plastic... So why not burn it in the salt before selling it? I think because nobody cares. It is pollution that does not make harm. Or it must be proved it makes harm to you...
Even if you will accidentally swallow the worm in the soup, it must be proved that it is harm to you!
A lot of salt when sold in bulk packaging is shipped in either large (reinforced) plastic bags or plastic buckets. If they were measuring for plastics at the consumer level that would be where the plastic came from.
.... contain salt...
...at not extra cost!
Free plastic!
Free plastic everyone!