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!
...with a grain of salt!
FUD? I think it does shed light on just how pervasive plastics are in our world now in ways we might not realize, especially when it comes to things that the people normally think are relatively pure and "clean", such as salt. It does show how unaware the effects on humans are - either at the micro level with table salt, or at the macro level when you combine all sources of uplastics in typical diets around the world.
Plastics contain more than just long-chain polymers. There are just gobs of different chemicals that can be locked up inside the structure of a given plastic which then slowly leach out over time. We've found that many of them are carcinogenic (or their breakdown products are carcinogenic), or even bio-mimics, such as BPA, and have been attributed to hormone-based diseases. We just don't know the extent of the deleterious effect all this has on ourselves, not to mention our food sources. So, the focus is not weird. It's actually really fsckin' important.