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Human exposure to microplastics (MPs) through drinking water has drawn serious concern recently because of the potential adverse health effects. Although there are reports on the occurrence of MPs in bottled water, little is known about the abundance of a whole spectrum of MPs with sizes ranging from 1 µm to 5 mm due to the restrictions of conventional MPs detection methods. Some studies using micro-Raman spectroscopy can achieve MPs with a size of -1, while MPs with a size of -1, where the MPs abundance from mineral water samples were significantly more than distilled and spring water samples. The modal size and shape of MPs were found at 1 µm and fragments, respectively. Besides, three tap water samples obtained locally were analyzed and compared with the bottled water samples, where less MPs were found in tap water samples. In addition, contamination of MPs from bottle and cap and interference by addition of mineral salts were studied, where no significant difference from all these processes to the control sample was found, suggesting the major contamination of MPs was from other manufacturing processes. Estimated daily intake (EDI) of MPs increased substantially when data of small MPs are included, suggesting that previously reports on exposure of MPs from drinking water might be underestimated, as only large MPs were considered.
Tse et al. (Tue,) studied this question.