ForumIAS announcing GS Foundation Program for UPSC CSE 2025-26 from 10th August. Click Here for more information.
Over 100 tiny plastic fibres present in every meal: study
Context
A study conducted by scientists from Heriot-Watt University
What they did?
They put petri dishes containing sticky dust traps on the table next to dinner plates in three homes
What did they find?
Up to 14 bits of plastic were found in the petri dishes at the end of a 20-minute meal — the equivalent of 114 plastic fibers falling on the average dinner plate given their much larger size
Source of the particles
The plastic fibers found in the home-cooked meals did not come from the food or the cooking environment, but from household dust
Conclusions
The average person swallows up to 68,415 potentially dangerous plastic fibers a year simply through sitting down to eat
