Bluewater Welcomes California Decision To Adopt Definition of Microplastics in Drinking Water

Bluewater, a world leader in innovative water tech solutions for homes and businesses, has welcomed a decision by California to adopt a definition for “microplastics”that will be used in the testing of drinking water for microplastics.

“This is a big step forward by a widely respected U.S. regulatory body as it sets an unambiguous definition for what we mean when we talk about microplastic in drinking water.” said Bluewater spokesperson David Noble. He said micro plastics are now found ‘not only in the tap and bottle water we drink, but also in the air we breathe and the food we eat’.

The California State Water Resources Board proposes defining ‘microplastics in drinking water’ as “solid1 polymeric materials to which chemical additives or other substances may have been added, which are particles which have at least three dimensions that are greater than 1nm and less than 5,000 micrometers (µm)”.

The Board said that “evidence concerning the toxicity and exposure of humans to microplastics is nascent and rapidly evolving”.

In a report commissioned by Bluewater in 2019, one of the world’s leading specialists on hormones described micro plastic pollution as ‘the number one threat to humankind’ due to the way it affected blood pressure, fertility, immune systems and sparked multiple diseases including cancer.

Plastic particle are today so widespread in nature and our homes and business premises that they enter the human system from every imaginable source – from toothpaste to pasta to drinking water from the tap and supermarket bottles.

A recent WWF study implemented by researchers at the University of Newcastle, Australia suggests that ‘an average person could be ingesting approximately 5 grams of plastic every week’ – the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of microplastics.

Noting that the WWF research says that the largest source of plastic ingestion is drinking water, with plastic found in groundwater, surface water, tap water and bottled water all over the world, Noble said more research was urgently needed into the negative impact of plastics on human health.According to the Pacific Institute science-based think tank, consumers around the world spend approximately $100 billion per year on bottled water, despite it costing several thousand times more per litre than municipal water, according to the American Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Nor is bottled water necessarily a better quality option to tap water.An EWG investigation found that PET plastics – the kind used to make plastic water bottles and marked with a “1” on the bottom – can contain dozens of chemical additives, manufacturing impurities and breakdown byproducts, while tests carried out by Orb Media on a number of leading bottled water brands revealed most contained tiny particles of plastic.

Stockholm, Sweden-based, Bluewater has developed a range of home and commercial water purifiers that harness new generation reverse osmosis technology, the platinum standard for delivering point of use pure water free of practically all contaminants, including micro-plastics. Bluewater , which has put ending the need for single use plastic bottles at the core of its business mission, also has innovated its own line of eco-friendly stainless steel and borosilicate glass bottles to accompany its public water dispensers. In 2019 Bluewater was honored with two Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards as well as a 2019 K&B Kitchen Innovation of the Year Award.

“We see the damage macro plastic inflicts on the marine eco system, but there is still insufficient research published about what the exposure to invisible micro and nano plastics and the chemicals in them is having on human health,” said David Noble.

For more information, please contact David Noble,on +44 7785 302 694 or david.noble@bluewatergroup.com