240,000 plastic particles per litre: what the new bottled-water study really found
A January 2024 study in PNAS used a new imaging technique to count nanoplastics in bottled water — 10 to 100 times more particles than earlier estimates. Here is what it means, and what it doesn’t.
PURISOL® Team
In January 2024, researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that made headlines worldwide. Using stimulated Raman scattering microscopy — a technique that can identify particles far smaller than earlier methods could see — they found that a litre of bottled water contained on average around 240,000 detectable plastic fragments.
The key findings
- Particle counts ranged from roughly 110,000 to 370,000 per litre across the samples tested.
- About 90% were nanoplastics — particles smaller than one micrometre — rather than larger microplastics.
- That is 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than previous estimates, which were based mainly on larger sizes.
What it does not tell us (yet)
The study measured particles; it did not measure health effects. Scientists are still investigating what nanoplastics do in the body, and the researchers could not identify the composition of many of the particles. The responsible response is neither panic nor dismissal, but attention to how drinking water is treated, stored and handled.
Practical steps for households and businesses
- Prefer treated, tested water with published quality parameters such as total dissolved solids (TDS) and hardness.
- Reduce single-use bottles. Refillable, professionally sanitised containers cut the number of small bottles a household or office goes through.
- Keep containers out of heat and sunlight, which stresses plastic during storage and transport.
- Ask your supplier how containers are cleaned and inspected between refills.
How PURISOL® approaches it
PURISOL® produces ultra-pure drinking water with TDS below 60 ppm and near-zero hardness, delivered in hygienically refilled 18.5-litre containers on a scheduled route. Each container is cleaned and inspected before it goes back into circulation. Learn more about PURISOL®.
Sources
Written by
PURISOL® Team
