Your Tea Bag Might Be Shedding Billions of Microplastics

Your favorite tea could be exposing you to billions of tiny plastic particles, new research finds.1

In a November 2024 study published in Chemosphere, researchers tested three different brands of tea bags for exposure to microplastics—degraded plastic bits that don’t break down and are suspected to impact human health.

The team found that brewing tea in a plastic bag made of polypropylene, a common tea bag material, released over a billion particles per milliliter of tea. Paper tea bags made of cellulose and mesh nylon bags shed millions of plastic particles per milliliter.

“The fact that they did find so many of these micro and nanoplastics in a product that’s supposed to be consumed is potentially concerning,” John Meeker, ScD, CIH, a professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told Health.

After extracting the plastics from the brewed tea, the researchers exposed them to human intestinal cells. The cells absorbed the plastic particles, suggesting that microplastics could remain in the body after drinking tea.