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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 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.
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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.
It might not necessarily be from the ocean or salt collection itself; could just be part of processing that is adding the micro plastic.
If that were true how would you explain that they found that sea salt consistently had a higher concentration vs rock salt and lake salt? If it's due to the dispenser how would the concentrations always be higher from sources that are known to have a higher concentration ot microplastics?
Also why would the concentrations be higher in salt from Asia?
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?
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Cancer yes, Autism, No.
The reason the microplastics are finding their way in, in the first place is due to plastic in the damn packaging. Salt, is just like sand, it will grind the coating off anything it touches, that includes plastic liners, pipes, cups, and so forth.
At the current point in time, I think news like this is just going to push people away from buying salt, but does nothing about commercial uses of salt (think pre-packaged cooked goods.)
If that were true how would you explain that they found that sea salt consistently had a higher concentration vs rock salt and lake salt?
We don't know that. We know the number of particles was different, but that is nothing about the concentration. What was the mass of the plastic? Would you rather eat 100 particles each of 100 ug size, or 10 particles each of 1 gram size? The number of particles is irrelevant; the dosage/mass matters - and that is not given.
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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?
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...with a grain of salt!
Some plastics - ABS, PVDF, CPVC - will dissolve in hydrochloric (stomach) acid. So dosage would matter.
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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.
If that were true how would you explain that they found that sea salt consistently had a higher concentration vs rock salt and lake salt?
We don't know that. We know the number of particles was different, but that is nothing about the concentration. What was the mass of the plastic? Would you rather eat 100 particles each of 100 ug size, or 10 particles each of 1 gram size? The number of particles is irrelevant; the dosage/mass matters - and that is not given.
Uhm, if you read tfs of the actual study it does talk about ng/kg. NatGeo utterly fails on their article though.
Not that I expect the study is THAT much better...given who it's from.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
TFA says they tested Rock, Sea and Lake salts. My expectation would be that rock salts are lower risk than sea salts, but the results don't seem to show that, with evaporated sea salts seemingly getting some of the best scores, though logically they would seem to be at highest risk of contamination by microplastics. The annoying thing about all these scientific studies (they quote 5 earlier studies as well) is that they anonymize their results to avoid being sued by multinational corporations with enough money to spend on lawyers that they will bleed the researchers dry before they can win, so as a consumer you can't actually use them to choose which salt to buy.
Also why would the concentrations be higher in salt from Asia?
Because most Asian nations still have bad treatment of waste water and garbage. The coasts there are much more littered with plastic then e.g. the Atlantic Ocean in France or the Northern Sea in Germany.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
is that they anonymize their results to avoid being sued by multinational corporations with enough money to spend on lawyers that they will bleed the researchers dry before they can win
That is nonsense. You usually have no costs during a running court suit. The losing party pays at the end.
The only plausible idea I have, why rock slat is contaminated at all is: they package it in the same plants. So it gets cross contaminated by sea salt. By definition rock salt can not contain plastic micro particles, unless there was once an ancient civilization that polluted the salt ....
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You can guarantee that cooking pretty much anything is gonna dissolve the microplastics you add to it.
How many of those rock salt mines use plastic shovels and tubs to haul around the salt? Metal doesn't usually last too long around corrosive chemicals like salt.
I also wonder how many of the salts they tested cam in plastic bags or plastic lined cardboard boxes to keep out moisture. How much of the measured plastic content was abraded from the container?
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.
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?
You usually have no costs during a running court suit. The losing party pays at the end.
Your statement is nonsense without specifying a jurisdiction.
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.
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.
Interesting thought, especially if the zero plastic containing anonymous French sample was from the market leader, because that comes in cardboard boxes.
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".
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.
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.
Autism - that's been around forever, but never been categorised and recorded. That's why all the graphs for diagnosis of it go up. It took until the late 90's to get a standardised definition that wasn't constantly having other things lumped into it (i.e. ASD instead of ten different conditions), or wasn't just an unspecified "psychiatric" condition. Plus there's evidence it's genetic.
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.
Microplastics are a good anti-caking agent in salt.
No. Have you? My time is worth more than a Slashdot comment pays.
Tell me, do you have the same kind of evidence to the contrary? Or even anything that hints at that? Because something so pervasive (no dispute there) and damaging as you claim would show up, no?
I don't need to do your homework for you to hypothesise that this is a for-eyeballs article which - although probably true in the extent of microplastic invasion - is completely misleading... like the "you've breathed a molecule from Caesar's dying breathe" kinda thing.
There is zero evidence, for example, that such microplastic presence, even in a human body, has any significant statistical correlation whatsoever to anything. And it would be quite easy to test, and check historical data for that. It would show, I would hypothesise, in coastal populations, especially those who swim or drink seawater (refined or not) compared to those who drink from frreshwater sources, and increase rapidly from the 1950's onwards as plastics became mainstream.
Unfortunately for you, the rate for a decent scientist to perform such a study or analysis with any amount of rigour is outside your (and my) means.
Tell me, have you read every medical paper that doesn't mention microplastics to see if the effects measured could be down to microplastics? No? Why? Because that's fecking ridiculous argument.
By default cancer is what you die from if you don't die from anything else, since everyone dies. AIDS is also what you die from if you don't die from anything else. Same goes for murder.
That doesn't mean cancer has no causes. It's not a result of old age. Plenty of people have lived to old age without cancer. There's always some probability of getting cancer, starting at birth. The longer you live, the longer you play that probability game. The goal is to identify outside (or internal, I suppose, i.e. genetic) factors that increase that probability and develop ways to mitigate them.
Maybe microplastics play a role, maybe not. Sounds like more study is needed to determine that.
Way to misunderstand the point. The point being made is that eventually, live long enough and you are likely to get and possibly eventually die from cancer. The same is not true for AIDS which is more or less completely preventable.
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.
Do all brands sell equal volumes of salt? Because only then would your argument work.
Every end has half a stick.
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
There is zero evidence, for example, that such microplastic presence, even in a human body, has any significant statistical correlation whatsoever to anything.
The chemicals contained in plastics (especially the plasticizers and other additives to plastics) HAVE been shown to have negative effects on health. That's why we go out of our way to find food grade plastics that don't leach the chemicals found in plastic into our food.
So it's not such a big stretch to think that maybe eating micro-plastics isn't such a good idea. You seem to have this very high standard for evidence before you act. You didn't really have to have controlled scientific studies to determine that smoking just might be bad for you. It had been suspected long before that. But it took until the late 60s/early 70s for the evidence to become largely irrefutable.
Eating plastic has no real upsides. Why is it you're arguing for the safety of eating it?
It is fairly trivial to locate studies comparing cancer rates in developed countries with those of people living in more natural environments. one example
When trying to pull an opinion out of one's ass in an educated manner, I find it helps to consider what potential mechanisms exist for harm. Since animals and humans ingest all sorts of inedible or partially inedible materials (like plant fiber), plants can uptake sand/silica and so on, small particulates of inedible organic material should be relatively 'normal'. So, microplastics in food should be less harmful than if they were, say, aerosolized and inhaled. Maybe not necessarily good, but probably no worse than eating vegetables from your garden that will have dirt, small bits of chitin from bugs, and other detritus you can't digest. To know for sure, you'd want to see if they dissolve into our blood when we eat them and, if so, then do a study with lab animals and go from there. Without considering mechanism, we would run around trying to prove that looking at yellow post-its doesn't give you eye cancer.
You're a fucking AC. Your anecdote about your 'sister' and her laurels is meaningless.
I'm sorry but there is quite a bit of evidence that plastics are harmful. Even looking only at BPA free plastics that everyone insists on thinking they are making a health conscious decision... there is mounting evidence that they are just as harmful. one example bpa-free-plastics-are-just-as-harmful
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.
Spot on there. Especially
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.
The obesity epidemic and all of the apologist for it are the epitome of unwillingness to accept blame. I say this being that myself was once obese, now just overweight and still working to reach some semblance of normal. I can fully attest that every single bit, every single pound over was without question my own doing.
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.
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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.
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No, it says "n/kg" and talks about the number of particles. Unless they really meant "ng/kg" and "nanograms" rather than particles - it's talking about the number of pieces per kilogram, not the amount of plastic.
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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 :).
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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.
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 want to find the cause of that, open your own fridge.
*opens 'fridge*
*is mostly empty space*
*what is there is relatively healthy compared to the crap most people eat*
Guess that's why I'm not obese. xD
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! --
How is parts per kg not a concentration?
Not true. My 100 year old grandmother died "healthy". Her small intestine just didn't pull nutrients out of food anymore.
...at not extra cost!
Free plastic!
Free plastic everyone!