Boiling Tap Water May Be Solution to Microplastics

Worried about plastic pollution in your tap water? Try boiling in it, a new study suggests.

Boiling tap water can destroy at least 80 percent of three of the most common plastic compounds that can be found in your water, according to findings published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters.

This means drinking tap water that has been boiled, something commonly done in East Asian kitchens already, may be a safer bet than drinking bottled water. Columbia researchers found last month that bottled water can contain up to a quarter-million fragments of nanoplastics per liter.

The researchers looked at the impacts of boiling on three compounds that have been found in water — polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene.

Because these compounds don’t fully break down, they ultimately fragment into nanoplastics the approximate size of a virus — making them the ideal size to wreak havoc with the machinery of human cells, and to cross through key protective filters like the intestinal lining and blood brain barrier.