Plastic pollution is a problem that threatens all the world’s ecosystems and people’s health, since we ingest plastic waste through food and drink, including water, which could trigger hormonal changes and contribute to the development of diseases. Now, a new study carried out by Spanish scientists that has analyzed the presence of organophosphate plasticizers in 75 samples of different beverages: water, cola-type soft drinks, juices, wine and hot drinks has discovered that, on average, sugary drinks have 100 times more concentration of this type of plasticizers than water, where the lowest values have been found.
The authors of the work are researchers from the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (IDAEA) of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and have verified that the plasticizers came from both the packaging and the sugar added to these drinks. Their findings have been published in the journal Environment International.
Plasticizers are a type of chemical compounds that are added to plastics to make them flexible and durable. Recent studies have shown that several organophosphate plasticizers are toxic and have harmful effects on health, including neurological damage, endocrine disruption, cancer and fertility problems. “Our results show that more than 95% of the beverages have at least one of the 19 organophosphate plasticizers that we studied, which shows the ubiquity of these compounds and our exposure to them in our day-to-day lives,” explains Julio Fernández Arribas. , IDAEA researcher and first author of the study.
Sugary cola-type soft drinks, the most contaminated
The researchers detected the highest levels of contamination in cola-type sugary soft drinks, with an average concentration of 2,876 nanograms per liter (ng/L), and for juices with added sugars (2,965 ng/L), while water samples contained the lower levels (20.7 ng/L).
“Our results show that more than 95% of beverages have at least one of the 19 organophosphate plasticizers we studied”
“One of the results that most caught our attention was the discovery that sugary drinks had higher levels of plasticizers, especially due to the presence of 2-ethylhexyldiphenyl phosphate (EHDPP),” says the IDAEA researcher. -CSIC Ethel Eljarrat and main author of the study. Analysis of sugar samples shows elevated levels of EHDPP, confirming that sugar added to beverages is one of the routes of contamination. It is important to note that the toxicity of EHDPP is related to an increased risk of developing some types of cancer, such as breast and uterine cancer.
To find out how the type of container influenced the origin of these chemical compounds, the researchers analyzed drinks of the same brand, but sold in different types of containers: glass, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and tetra brik. The results show that the concentrations of the organophosphate plasticizers are similar, regardless of the brand and the type of container. “The presence of plasticizers in bottles, cans and tetra brik was expected; but the levels in drinks packaged in glass were not foreseeable a priori”, points out Eljarrat. The authors have discovered that the source of contamination is the plastic coating on the metal sheets of the glass bottles to prevent the drink from coming into contact with the metal. This coating releases eight plasticizers into the beverages, with EHDPP again being the major compound.
Taking into account the consumption of beverages per capita in Spain, the intake of these plasticizers through beverages represents up to 10% of the total daily intake. “Despite the fact that these values are below the safety threshold, we must take into account that these plasticizers also reach the human body through other routes of exposure such as food intake and inhalation, so it is necessary to carry out a full assessment of the total amount of plasticizers we are exposed to,” concludes Eljarrat.
Source: Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC)
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