Bottle-fed babies may consume millions of microplastic particles, our research suggests

Posted on: 30 October 2020

By Dunzhu Li, Trinity College Dublin and Yunhong Shi, Trinity College Dublin

Microplastics can now be found in almost every environment on Earth, but scientists know surprisingly little about how the products we use every day shed these tiny plastic particles.

If you drink from a plastic water bottle or eat out of a microwaveable container today, there’s a good chance that you’re using polypropylene. Polyp

We felt we had a really comprehensive scientific approach. We rigorously adhered to the WHO procedure, used control tests, repeated the test with different liquids and across different temperatures multiple times and used statistical analysis to determine if our results were significant. But we also sent our methodology and sample products to an independent lab for them to verify. They came back with similar results, and so we can be confident in our findings – as shocking as they might seem.

How to reduce exposure

Given how widespread the use of polypropylene bottles is and the large quantity of microplastics released in our experiment, we decided to take our research a step further. We estimated how exposed 12-month-old infants are likely to be in 48 regions across the world by comparing the average release rates of microplastics from feeding bottles, the market share of plastic bottles, rates of bottle feeding and how much milk babies tend to drink daily. From this, we concluded that infants are likely to consume an average of 1.6 million polypropylene microplastic particles each day.

We don’t want to be alarmist. We don’t fully understand the risks to human health through exposure to these tiny plastic particles yet, but this is an area of research that we, and other teams, are actively pursuing.

In the meantime, there are ways to reduce a child’s exposure to microplastics during formula feeding. We are looking at coatings that can prevent microplastics being release during use and filters that could prevent microplastics entering our water supplies.

We’ve also developed a set of procedures for sterilising bottles and preparing formula feeds while reducing your exposure to microplastics from polypropylene bottles. The four quickest and easiest steps are:

1. Rinse sterilised feeding bottles with cool, sterile water.
2. Always prepare formula in a non-plastic container.
3. After formula has cooled to room temperature, transfer it into the cooled, sterilised feeding bottle.
4. Avoid rewarming prepared formula in plastic containers, especially with a microwave oven.

By Dunzhu Li, Research Fellow in Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin and Yunhong Shi, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.