Bottled water is bad – but microplastics aren’t the reason

Albert Karimov/Alamy Stock Photo

The discovery that most bottled water is contaminated with tiny fragments of plastic has stirred up a mild panic. But do these microplastics actually pose a risk?

According to a study commissioned by Orb Media, a global consortium of journalists, samples from 93 per cent of 259 bottles contained microplastic particles – an average of 10 particles wider than 100 micrometres, or roughly the width of a human hair, per litre. The bottles were purchased from countries in five different continents, although …