This suggests a (self-)experiment: Drink only filtered water/distilled water with selectively added minerals vs. tap water. Problem is if the effects are really small or really long-term, so we’d need samples that are several weeks long.
Is tap water expected to contain fewer microplastics than bottled water? In this case there’s surely some natural experiment[1] that could shed light on whether microplastics are harmful.
Although things like natural disasters which limit tap water access, surges in bottled water prices or tap water contaminations don’t count. Maybe the plastic supply chain experienced a disruption due to some natural disaster at some point, similar to GPU prices soaring when there was a flood in Thailand? There was a (small) sudden decline in price for HDPE/LDPE/LLDPE in early 2018, maybe that works. Although it seems like PET didn’t have a similar price drop.
This suggests a (self-)experiment: Drink only filtered water/distilled water with selectively added minerals vs. tap water. Problem is if the effects are really small or really long-term, so we’d need samples that are several weeks long.
Is tap water expected to contain fewer microplastics than bottled water? In this case there’s surely some natural experiment[1] that could shed light on whether microplastics are harmful.
Although things like natural disasters which limit tap water access, surges in bottled water prices or tap water contaminations don’t count. Maybe the plastic supply chain experienced a disruption due to some natural disaster at some point, similar to GPU prices soaring when there was a flood in Thailand? There was a (small) sudden decline in price for HDPE/LDPE/LLDPE in early 2018, maybe that works. Although it seems like PET didn’t have a similar price drop.