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.

Comments

Actual amount is in nanogram

[bshell]

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.

Re:Actual amount is in nanogram

[meza]

As I understand it the unit they use in the paper, "n/kg", refers to number of micro-particles per kg of salt. If you look at the supplemental materials (which I believe is accessible free of charge, not quite sure as I'm on a university network and also have access to the whole article) you can see in Table S1 listing of both n/kg and what they call "mean MP mass" which end up being in the range 0-70 mg/kg.

Re:Does it matter?

[AmiMoJo]

Yes according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Does it matter?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Some funny chemicals are harmful only in larger doses. Some of them are harmful in a cumulative way. Some are not harmful at all. So the question stands: does it matter? Simply stating “OMG chemicals!” Is as meaningless as the slogan “now with more molecules!”