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Micro-plastics in Beer. What you need to know

Micro-plastics in Beer. What you need to know

Love a cold beer? While this study was conducted in USA, we are most likely drinking micro-plastics with our beer the world over.

A recent US study tested 12 brands of beer sourcing water from the USA Laurentian Great Lakes and found micro-plastic fibres in 11 of them. (There were plastics in the 12th, but not enough to qualify as re-portable.)

The study specifically analyzed beers brewed from water sourced from the Laurentian Great Lakes, chosen because of the known prominence of plastic pollution within those bodies of water. In a parallel study, the same team looked at tap water sourced from both a number of municipalities who also supplied water to the breweries making the beer and other countries. 

In the survey results, the beer brands were not published, but the number of plastic pieces found per litre of beer (and the beer's water source) were published.   

Seven brands of beer were purchased from Minneapolis, Minnesota liquor stores, two were purchased directly from breweries in Duluth, Minnesota, and the remaining three were purchased in Alpena, Michigan and Rochester, New York and all but one contained micro-plastics. 

It turns out that along with your beer, you are sipping, mostly, blue plastic fibres. More specifically, according to the research report, "Of the 189 particles identified, the vast majority (98.4%) were classified as fibres while the remaining particles were identified as fragments. The average length of each fibre was 0.98 mm with a range from 0.1 to 5 mm. The most common colour was blue, followed by red/pink, and brown."

It seems that we are entering an era, where instead of questions about whether foods are nut-free, there should also be a requirement to list the micro-plastic count. 

IT’S BEEN OVER 45 YEARS SINCE PLASTIC POLLUTION WAS FIRST DETECTED IN THE NATURAL WORLD. SINCE THEN AN UNDISPUTED AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE HAS AMASSED TO SHOW THE STAGGERING EXTENT OF MICRO-PLASTICS IN OUR ENVIRONMENT -  AND IN US.  

There is a growing awareness of the problem of micro-plastics in our oceans and tap water, but perhaps we're not aware that they are also in the pelagic biome, coastal habitats, deep sea sediments, freshwater lakes and their associated tributaries, Arctic sea ice and even our ambient air.

(A separate study conducted in Scotland into micro-plastics in wild mussels compared the micro-plastic content of mussels to household dust consumed during a meal. The mussels contained some micro-plastic, but not much compared to what a person consumes while eating.

IN A YEAR, A PERSON COULD INGEST BETWEEN 13,731 AND 68,415 PIECES OF MICRO-PLASTIC VIA AIRBORNE FIBRES ALONE. GIVEN THAT WE KNOW FROM TAP WATER STUDIES THAT A PERSON COULD INGEST AROUND 5,000 PIECES OF MICRO-PLASTIC FROM WATER EACH YEAR, THIS IS A LOT OF AIRBORNE PLASTIC.) 

In the beer study, the lakes were known to contain high levels of plastics, so there was an assumption that the beer would have a correlated level, but this wasn't the case. The beers did contain micro-plastics as indicated above, but it wasn't from the lake water.   

ACCORDING TO THE STUDY, "IN SEVEN OF THE NINE MUNICIPALITIES REPRESENTING THE 12 BEERS ANALYZED, TAP WATER SAMPLES WERE ALSO OBTAINED AND PROCESSED IN ORDER TO ASSESS ANY CORRELATION BETWEEN THE TWO. WHILE BOTH THE MUNICIPAL TAP WATER AND THE BEERS ANALYZED ALL CONTAINED ANTHROPOGENIC PARTICLES, THERE SEEMED TO BE NO CORRELATION BETWEEN THE TWO (R = 0.016), WHICH WOULD SEEM TO INDICATE THAT ANY CONTAMINATION WITHIN THE BEER IS NOT JUST FROM THE WATER USED TO BREW THE BEER ITSELF."  

Beer is mostly water and the quality of the water plays a big role in the quality of the beer product and because of this, it's diligently purified, using a range of techniques.  

  • Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) faucet filters: filters contaminants down to about 5 microns (micrometres) so most micro-plastics will be removed.
  • Carbon Blocks faucet filters: A carbon block which filters contaminants down to 2 microns will get rid of all known micro-plastics. 
  • Reverse Osmosis filters: they can filter down to 0.001 microns so will remove micro-plastics, but are a lot more expensive and require maintenance.

Brewers purify the water and then build up the water profile in any way they wish to develop the flavor and properties of their beers.  So the micro-fibres are coming from somewhere else. The air, perhaps?

Wherever they are coming from, they exist. While we are yet to fully realise what the effect micro-plastics we are consuming will have on the human body, the early signs are that you can guarantee it’s not going to end well. The problem of course is that micro-plastics are literally everywhere and in everything, so giving up beer isn't really going to purify your body.   And not breathing doesn't really seem to be an option either. 

It is important however to do what you can, within the power you have to limit your contribution to your own and the planet's micro-plastics. 

Images: Unsplash - Michael Stuart / Elevate |  Table - Plos One / Research: University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health 

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