Do I Have Micro Plastics In My Filtered Water?

[Nabir14]

TL;DR Summary

I filled my water bottle using my schools water recycling filter and after leaving the water bottle untouched for days there are some dust like metarial floating inside the water. Is this micro plastic and is this even drinkable?

I took water from my schools water recycling filter.
It looks like this (image 1):

After filling my water bottle. I didn't drink from it and just left it untouched in my bag. After few days I took it out and it looks very unclear and some dust like metarials are floating inside the water.
This is how it looks like (image 2) and here I marked them incase they might be unnoticeable because of the image quality (image 3):

I did the same with the water I have at home and it is totally clear.
Here it is (image 4)

So if I leave a water collected from a recycling filter it has these dusty metarials in it and water which isn't collected from recycling filter is very clear.

My question is that is the water collected from recycling filter contain micro plastic? Is it drinkable? Overall is water recycling filters safe? (or was that specific filter my school is using maybe faulty?)

 

[Borek]

water recycling filter

Makes me wonder if it is just a filter, or if there is really a water recycling system at your school (as far as I know the latter being quite a costly and complicated system, but I am not following water treatment technology, so perhaps something has changed).

Things that precipitate out of water are most often related to temporary water hardness and the precipitate is just calcium carbonate (perfectly safe). Doesn't mean that's what you see, but there is no way to tell just by looking at pictures.

 

[Nabir14]

Makes me wonder if it is just a filter, or if there is really a water recycling system at your school (as far as I know the latter being quite a costly and complicated system, but I am not following water treatment technology, so perhaps something has changed).

Things that precipitate out of water are most often related to temporary water hardness and the precipitate is just calcium carbonate (perfectly safe). Doesn't mean that's what you see, but there is no way to tell just by looking at pictures.

Hmm I tried touching those little particles and some of them are plastic type and some are like wet dust.

 

[JT Smith]

Your comparison wasn't fair since you used a clean looking glass for the tap water and a well used looking plastic bottle for the filtered water. In other words, how can you be certain the stuff wasn't already in your bottle?

 

[Tom.G]

TL;DR Summary: I filled my water bottle using my schools water recycling filter and after leaving the water bottle untouched for days there are some dust like metarial floating inside the water. Is this micro plastic and is this even drinkable?

untouched in my bag. After few days I took it out and it looks very unclear

DO NOT DRINK IT.

If it was clear when first filled then turned cloudy, the most likely is bacteria growing rather well in the water.

Maybe your bottle was contaminated rather than the water source.

In any case, it would be a good idea to show the cloudy water to someone at the school that has the authority to enforce some action/investigation.

Glad you were curious enough to investigate!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[berkeman]

In any case, it would be a good idea to show the cloudy water to someone at the school that has the authority to enforce some action/investigation.

I would also recommend talking to somebody in authority at the school, but I would do a more controlled experiment first. Use clean Petri dishes or test tubes or similar to collect the water samples and let them sit for a couple of days. Do you have access to a microscope at school, especially with polarized light sources?

What year are you in school? How well do you know the science teachers at your school?

 

[Borek]

some of them are plastic type

Note: seems to me like you are mostly concerned about microplastic. Don't.

There is plenty of a scary hype about microplastic that is detected everywhere, but first - so far it is not clear if it is in any way dangerous (if it really were it would be long obvious and observed in health statistics, so far we don't see anything like that), second - its amounts are small, it is not like it can be detected just because it drops out of water in visible amounts.

Chemical things that are dangerous/pathogens are typically just compounds with a relatively small molecular mass. These can be present between products of the plastic decomposition, this is well known. But if microplastics are stable enough to survive for many years, amount of decomposition products they produce is very low, which makes related dangers low too. It is dose that makes the poison.

That's not to say microplastic is OK, no, I don't like its omnipresence either, and we can still detect mechanisms which make them more serious problem than we know as of today. Still, we don't see their effects in death/epidemic statistics, so they don't make our lives much more dangerous than it already is. Don't fall for the fearmongering.

 

[Rive]

...water recycling filter...

It may just be me, but on the manufacturer (? USWater ?) I could not find that term. Could somebody please enlighten me what that is supposed to mean in the context of this topic?

As far as I know actual water recycling is a far more complex problem than just filtering.

 

[Borek]

It may just be me, but on the manufacturer (? USWater ?) I could not find that term. Could somebody please enlighten me what that is supposed to mean in the context of this topic?

As far as I know actual water recycling is a far more complex problem than just filtering.

Yep, caught my attention too (see my first post).

My bet is that these are just filters mechanically filtering small solids, softening water and removing contamination with activated charcoal. Nothing to do with recycling.

 

[Nabir14]

Your comparison wasn't fair since you used a clean looking glass for the tap water and a well used looking plastic bottle for the filtered water. In other words, how can you be certain the stuff wasn't already in your bottle?

The water was poured from the bottle and I clean my bottle everytime before filling so I am sure it wasn't there when I filled it.

 

[Nabir14]

DO NOT DRINK IT.

If it was clear when first filled then turned cloudy, the most likely is bacteria growing rather well in the water.

Maybe your bottle was contaminated rather than the water source.

In any case, it would be a good idea to show the cloudy water to someone at the school that has the authority to enforce some action/investigation.

Glad you were curious enough to investigate!

Cheers,
Tom

Thanks, I will try to inform the authority.

 

[Nabir14]

I would also recommend talking to somebody in authority at the school, but I would do a more controlled experiment first. Use clean Petri dishes or test tubes or similar to collect the water samples and let them sit for a couple of days. Do you have access to a microscope at school, especially with polarized light sources?

What year are you in school? How well do you know the science teachers at your school?

I am in 10th grade. We have a chemistry lab in our school which has a complex microscope though they won't let us access that. I do know a chemistry teacher out of the school and he has an electron microscope and he also has test tubes (almost every chemistry equipment more than the school) which I have access to. I will try to do a more controlled test. If I see the same results I will inform the authorities.

 

[Nabir14]

It may just be me, but on the manufacturer (? USWater ?) I could not find that term. Could somebody please enlighten me what that is supposed to mean in the context of this topic?

As far as I know actual water recycling is a far more complex problem than just filtering.

They state that it is a recycling system.

 

[Nabir14]

Yep, caught my attention too (see my first post).

My bet is that these are just filters mechanically filtering small solids, softening water and removing contamination with activated charcoal. Nothing to do with recycling

Oh

 

[Nabir14]

Note: seems to me like you are mostly concerned about microplastic. Don't.

There is plenty of a scary hype about microplastic that is detected everywhere, but first - so far it is not clear if it is in any way dangerous (if it really were it would be long obvious and observed in health statistics, so far we don't see anything like that), second - its amounts are small, it is not like it can be detected just because it drops out of water in visible amounts.

Chemical things that are dangerous/pathogens are typically just compounds with a relatively small molecular mass. These can be present between products of the plastic decomposition, this is well known. But if microplastics are stable enough to survive for many years, amount of decomposition products they produce is very low, which makes related dangers low too. It is dose that makes the poison.

That's not to say microplastic is OK, no, I don't like its omnipresence either, and we can still detect mechanisms which make them more serious problem than we know as of today. Still, we don't see their effects in death/epidemic statistics, so they don't make our lives much more dangerous than it already is. Don't fall for the fearmongering.

I am not that concerned about microplastics. Thanks for the information.

 

[Rive]

They state that it is a recycling system.

If it's only that filter and really introduced as recycling system and supposed to produce drinking water in a school, then something feels fishy there.

I would try to inquire about that system: what is it exactly, what is the water source and is it really supposed to produce drinking water?

 

[Nabir14]

If it's only that filter and really introduced as recycling system and supposed to produce drinking water in a school, then something feels fishy there.

I would try to inquire about that system: what is it exactly, what is the water source and is it really supposed to produce drinking water

It is trying to make the tap water drinkable which isn't safe to drink here

 

[Nik_2213]

IMHO, micro-plastics are the least of your worries.

Do you routinely sanitise bottle and nozzle ?
Did you rinse your bottle, nozzle etc before filling ?
Did you store the filled bottle in the dark ??
How may times do you slurp from a filled bottle ??

Is there any date-label / instrumentation on the water filter to indicate usage / exhaustion ??

It resembles the pre-filter we had on several DI/RO systems in our QA/QC labs. Depending on season and utility activity, the input quality varied. We had to rely on eg instrumentation limits rather than actual usage. Cleaning, sanitising the components involved a lot more work than simply changing modular filters and membranes etc.

 

[Nabir14]

IMHO, micro-plastics are the least of your worries.

Do you routinely sanitise bottle and nozzle ?
Did you rinse your bottle, nozzle etc before filling ?
Did you store the filled bottle in the dark ??
How may times do you slurp from a filled bottle ??

Is there any date-label / instrumentation on the water filter to indicate usage / exhaustion ??

It resembles the pre-filter we had on several DI/RO systems in our QA/QC labs. Depending on season and utility activity, the input quality varied. We had to rely on eg instrumentation limits rather than actual usage. Cleaning, sanitising the components involved a lot more work than simply changing modular filters and membranes etc.

I always keep my bottle clean even before filling it. It is mostly stored in the dark (my backpack). I am not sure about the filters management. I never saw them clean components or change filters...

 

[Rive]

It is trying to make the tap water drinkable which isn't safe to drink here

That's reassuring. Recycling with such equipment would be a bit too much to think about...

This is what I would do at this point:
- check the water utility provider for quality reports, whether that tap water is really problematic. Many cases it is actually fine, apart from some attached fearmongering like the 'microplastic' story mentioned above.
- I would ask around the school whether that filter is actually regularly maintained (thus: still functional) and actually, what does it do? What kind of filters are present in the set?

 

[Nabir14]

That's reassuring. Recycling with such equipment would be a bit too much to think about...

This is what I would do at this point:
- check the water utility provider for quality reports, whether that tap water is really problematic. Many cases it is actually fine, apart from some attached fearmongering like the 'microplastic' story mentioned above.
- I would ask around the school whether that filter is actually regularly maintained (thus: still functional) and actually, what does it do? What kind of filters are present in the set?

all those questions have answered. That tap water isn't drinkable and the filter isn't much maintained and even though I now am aware of this "microplastic" I will add that too.

 

[Rive]

If it is really so, that concludes it: a defunct filter won't make non-drinkable tap water drinkable, so don't drink it.
Best if the tap could be labelled accordingly or permanently closed.

 

[russ_watters]

all those questions have answered. That tap water isn't drinkable

How do you know it isn't drinkable/what is contaminating it? If you know that, you should be able to find a purification method/filter to make it safe.

 

[Borek]

How do you know it isn't drinkable/what is contaminating it?

Apparently OP is from a place where public tap water can't be trusted. We take it for granted, sadly that's not the case in many countries. Quite often the first warning for tourists from abroad is "drink only bottled water that you opened by yourself, or boil water before drinking".

 

[Nabir14]

If it is really so, that concludes it: a defunct filter won't make non-drinkable tap water drinkable, so don't drink it.
Best if the tap could be labelled accordingly or permanently closed.

I will try to inform the teachers

 

[Nabir14]

How do you know it isn't drinkable/what is contaminating it? If you know that, you should be able to find a purification method/filter to make it safe.

I know it because we all here do know that in our place the tap water is polluted and I will try to inform the teachers to replace the filter as soon as possible.

 

[Nabir14]

Apparently OP is from a place where public tap water can't be trusted. We take it for granted, sadly that's not the case in many countries. Quite often the first warning for tourists from abroad is "drink only bottled water that you opened by yourself, or boil water before drinking".

Exactly here we need to boil water before drinking it.