×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

"Nobody is safe": Plastic found in drinking water on five continents

by Anna Pujol-Mazzini | @annapmzn | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 6 September 2017 17:06 GMT

Workers load collected plastic bottles on to a truck at a junk shop in Manila March 10, 2015. The Philippines placed third among the list of countries with the most ocean plastic pollution per year. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

Image Caption and Rights Information

It's probably not something that we want to be ingesting, but we are, whether through our drinking water, through beer, juice

By Anna Pujol-Mazzini

LONDON, Sept 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Tiny pieces of plastic have been found in drinking water on five continents - from Trump Tower in New York to a public tap on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda - posing a potential risk to people's health, researchers said on Wednesday.

Plastic degrades over time into tiny particles known as microplastics, which were found in 83 percent of samples from Germany to Cuba to Lebanon analysed by U.S.-based digital news organisation Orb Media.

"If you ask people whether they want to be eating or drinking plastic, they just say: 'No, that's a dumb question'," said Sherri Mason, one of study's authors and a chemistry professor at the State University of New York.

"It's probably not something that we want to be ingesting, but we are, whether through our drinking water, through beer, juice. It's in our food, sea-salt, mussels. Nobody is safe," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Microplastics of up to 5 millimeters are also in bottled water, she said.

The health impacts of ingesting plastics are unclear but studies on fish have shown they inhibit hatching of fertilised eggs, stunt growth, and make them more susceptible to predators, increasing mortality rates.

Microplastics absorb toxic chemicals from the marine environment, which are released into the bodies of fish and mammals who consume them, Orb Media's chief executive, Molly Bingham, said in a statement.

While many studies have shown the prevalence of microplastics in the world's oceans, where more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic are floating, it is the first time research has been conducted into drinking water.

(Reporting by Anna Pujol-Mazzini @annapmzn, Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->