Plastic Fibres Found in Tap Water Around the World
September 6th, 2017The ground up plastic is turning up in sea salt that people are eating now.
Via: Guardian:
Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.
Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for an investigation by Orb Media, who shared the findings with the Guardian. Overall, 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibres.
The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York. Lebanon and India had the next highest rates.
European nations including the UK, Germany and France had the lowest contamination rate, but this was still 72%. The average number of fibres found in each 500ml sample ranged from 4.8 in the US to 1.9 in Europe.
The new analyses indicate the ubiquitous extent of microplastic contamination in the global environment. Previous work has been largely focused on plastic pollution in the oceans, which suggests people are eating microplastics via contaminated seafood.
“We have enough data from looking at wildlife, and the impacts that it’s having on wildlife, to be concerned,” said Dr Sherri Mason, a microplastic expert at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who supervised the analyses for Orb. “If it’s impacting [wildlife], then how do we think that it’s not going to somehow impact us?”
Research Credit: tochigi
So poetically perfect: an unreal, toxic society literally filling its citizens with the perfect embodiment and symbol of the unreal and the toxic, petroleum-based plastic.
Maybe this comes from the latest piping material ? Metallic pipes are susceptible to corrosion if a biofilm is not allowed to develop, and if it is bacterial releases are frequent.
An efficient method of water treatment for almost all types of pollution is evaporation followed by condensation. This is achievable in sunny weather with this type of setup : http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/solaqua/stilldiag.gif (beware of bromine and alcohol that could evaporate with the water)
In cloudy weather one may obtain heat with a compost pile through which a water-filled hose is rolled.
Another method to treat water for drinking is to get it through a slow sand filter (for biological pollution) and then an ‘activated’ charcoal one (for non-polar chemical pollution, such as VOCs and pesticides. Activation is realized by heating the charcoal at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen). I guess polarized chemicals can be removed with magnets.
This website has some dope on slow sand filtration : http://www.biosandfilter.org/biosand-filter/filtration-process/biological-action/