Tea bags and these 11 foods are likely exposing you to billions of microplastics

By Ani Freedman – Fortune Well

Would you put down your cozy cup of tea if you knew that you were drinking billions of tiny pieces of plastic?

A study published in November investigated the release of micro and nanoplastics from three empty tea bags purchased from Amazon, online shopping site AliExpress, and from a supermarket. They found that tea bags made with the plastic substance polypropylene—used to heat-seal tea bags shut—released about 1.2 billion small pieces of plastic per milliliter of tea, while bags made with nylon-6 released 135 million pieces, and those made with cellulose released 8.2 million nano-range (extremely tiny) plastic particles.