Millions of tons of tiny debris from decaying plastic products have made their way into the world’s rivers, its lakes and oceans…And now researchers have determined that micro-plastics are making their way into our beer.

Yikes!

And it’s not just that your IPA might have minute plastics particles in it, it’s that those man-made bits have an uncanny ability to attract poisonous chemicals “like a magnet”, according to the Plastic Ocean Foundation.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found micro-plastics in 12 brands of beer made with water from the Great Lakes. The study which  overseen by UMN School of Public Health associate professor Betsy Wattenberg and sampled 12 brands of beer from large brewers and craft brewers from around the Great Lakes.

The research team team also collected 159 tap water samples from around the world and found that 81 percent of the samples from 14 countries were contaminated with micro plastic fibers and granules.

Not good….

“I think what was surprising was the widespread contamination, that the contamination was detected in tap water throughout the world in many sources of tap water from both urban sources and rural sources, in both developing countries and developed countries,” Wattenberg told NPR.

“Some applications of plastic are really necessary, for example for medical uses. But others we could really sort of reflect on whether we need so much plastic packaging, so many plastic water bottles and so on.”

The beers used in the study which was published in by the online Journal PLOS ONE, were primarily pilsners, purchased from several states that border the Great Lakes,. And again ALL of the beers that they tested were found to have micro-plastic particles in them.

Bottom line…

If scientists are finding plastic in beer, the scale of this toxic invasion is already at a tipping point…IT’S ALREADY INFILTRATED OUR WATER SUPPLY, and unfortunately probably in almost everything including our beer…

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