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So nothing coupled to the glass but rather the cap having a extra plastic layer on the wet side.
Sounds like we found the issue, now it's just a matter of producers improving the caps
Only if it doesn’t cut it to record profits
Only if it somehow increases profit. FTFY
Nah ill just spend $50 to have a Congress member introduce a bill to make regulating microplastics illegal
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No, the paint on the outside.
Yes. So many people are misunderstanding this article... The microplastics are on the inside, in the drink, and they are bits of the paint from the exterior of bottle caps that stuck to the inside of other caps when the caps were all jumbled together in big bags before they were placed on the bottles.
That would be far more intuitive, but it's not that - it's the painted logo on the outside.
Step 1: Invent plastic bottles
Step 2: Pocket the cash
Step 3: Things got bad? Outsource the clean-up to the end user in the form of recycling
Step 4: Increase prices to account for recycling
Step 5: Laugh as the idiots actually recycle your shit
Step 6: Throw the whole shebang in the ocean or in landfills
Step 7: Pocket some more cash
Step 8: Pat yourself on your shoulder. You've done some capitalism.
Title seems misleading.
As the micro plastics were found on the paint outside the bottle cap. It seems complicate that that ended on the drink itself. Unless you are licking the bottle cap it doesn't seem that relevant.
No, the microplastics were found in the content of the bottles. The cap thing is where they come from. As a reply to you explained, the microplastic from the top of a cap is scratched by another cap and ends up on the bottom of yet another cap.
The paint on the caps also had "tiny scratches, invisible to the naked eye, probably due to friction between the caps when there were stored," the agency said in a statement.
This could then "release particles onto the surface of the caps," it added.
Paint scratches off the outside, then sticks to the inside and makes it into the drink.
Landing on the outside surface though, how is it making it through the cap?
Caps aren't stored individually, they scratch each other all the way into the capping machine, see this cap feeder for example:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4717zbMCMHU
https://youtu.be/4717zbMCMHU
Wait...we not licking bottle caps anymore?!
I think because there is a helix twist that glass would grind away the plastic every time it’s recapped. Hence why at the end of the article it is urging manufacturers to use air and alcohol to clean the cap before fitting it to the bottle. Additionally using something other than a plastic cap to reseal the bottle when being used. And especially not one with a helix requiring a twist. You can use a wine reseal which requires no twisting
Man on the surface this reeks of inside payoffs. I guess the technicality is plastic caps on glass bottles?? Which seems weird and nothing I've ever seen. Unless they're referencing the seal on the inside of some metal caps on glass bottles? Either way, seems suspect. I'd assume that overall drinking from glass is safer, as with plastic on any timeline you're dealing with the plastic breaking down and leaching chemicals and micro plastics into the liquid, which wouldn't be an issue with glass.
Not plastic caps, plastic paint. The printing on bottlecaps is a polymer and it gets scuffed.
Odd. I would have thought that the paint, being on the exterior, wouldn't leak into the beverage contained inside the glass.
But apparently, they found that blowing air over the caps reduced the amount of detected contamination by 60 per cent. So it seems like an easy fix that manufacturers can implement inexpensively (literally just an electric fan)
Or just not paint the caps, at least not with plastic.
There is a real reason that the caps are painted. Glass beverage bottles are usually stored in a crate and grabbed from the top, so the design on the lid is what restaurant or store employees used to distinguish what drink is contained within it. This allows employees to distinguish similar-coloured drinks (e.g. Coca-Cola vs Pepsi or two different brands of beer) just from looking down at the top of the bottle.
But there probably is a way to paint them without using plastics
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Unfortunately, it's probably not going to be an electric fan, but compressed air. Even more unfortunately, compressed air turns out to be a major cost factor due to the cost of running compressors, which might prevent adoption.
The original paper mentions blowing the caps out with an "air bomb", which I'm pretty sure is a mistranslation stemming from the French term "Bombe d’Air Comprimé", i. e. an air duster, a can of compressed air. In an industrial setting, you'd use a compressor for this, naturally.
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The paint itself on the outside of the bottle cap. The ultra thin layer of (apparently polymer a.k.a. plastic) paint that make the cap not just metal colored.
For the people in the comments who either won't or seemingly can't read the article: The paint on the top of the caps is plastic-based and before they're put on the bottle they're stored in a big jumbled up pile where the paint chips off and coats the caps in tiny flakes. When the cap gets put on the bottle, the flakes on the bottom of the cap get washed off into your drink. Studies show that washing the caps first dramatically reduces the micro-plastic contamination.
Just pour it from the glass bottle to the plastic bottle. Problem solved
We just need glass caps then
When I was a kid they were made from metal
When I was a kid they were made from cork.
How are you still alive?🙈
In a bizarre twist, glass caps have been found to contain alarming levels of microdrink.
I quite like the swing tops with a small rubber ring that makes the seal. Easily reused too. Which is better than recycling.
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...do plastic bottles not have caps? I'm confused.
their caps are fully plastic, not painted metal. The non-screwtop metal caps need to be bent to release their grip on the bottle. That scrapes the paint off the metal cap.
it's more likely that paint is scratched off by other caps, idk about metal caps but plastic ones are usually handled in bags, thrown into a cap feeder that aligns them and loads them into the capper. I expect metal caps to go through a similar process, and all that movement is bound to scratch it and send particles everywhere.
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Ok, great find, we can simply switch the caps & solve the problem.
(The corps will do that, right??)
But I wander with such tests ... could there be any significant detection issues?
Did they have the proper equipment and processes? A methodological limitation to particle size maybe?
Coz some researches find higher concentrations than 100.
WTF. Guess I'm an android now, because I'm half plastics on the inside.
Anyone drinking beer or soft drinks out of glass bottles probably isn't worried about micro-plastics.
I like beer and would definitely prefer my beer not contain microplastics
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Why?
Parent commneter implies that people who consume soft drinks or alcohol aren't concerned about their health because these beverages are not healthy
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What about kombucha? Ice tea? Water?!?! Would be nice to know that anything you consume regardless of how healthy or not doesn't contain micro plastics or other contaminants.
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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