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Disposable coffee cups fall off hundreds of millions of plastic particles in case of hot water!

Published: 2026-04-03 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/04/03, Coffee is a daily drink used by workers for "self-redemption". As we all know, ready-made coffee is liquid, which means a container is needed. But how many people can go to the coffee shop to get coffee with their own cups every day? It is more likely to use disposable cups provided by coffee shops. There is beauty.

Coffee is a daily drink used by workers for "self-redemption". As we all know, ready-made coffee is liquid, which means a container is needed. But how many people can go to the coffee shop to get coffee with their own cups every day? It is more likely to use disposable cups provided by coffee shops. Some US researchers have found that plastic products such as take-out coffee cups will fall off trillions of plastic particles in 20 minutes of hot water.

The degree of dependence of workers on coffee, one cup a day has become standard, there are five working days a week, does it not eat a lot of plastic into the stomach every day? Yes, it's true. As early as 2018, scholars from Austria warned that the human body had been contaminated with microplastics. In 2019, researchers in Austria confirmed that there were 20 pieces of microplastic in every 10 grams of feces.

Not long ago, related studies have shown that these microplastics are found not only in human blood, but also in the lungs. It can be seen that plastic has become a kind of invisible killer of human health.

It should be noted that microplastics have two different definitions according to the size of the particles. The term "microplastics" is usually referred to as plastic particles that are less than 5 mm in length and visible to the naked eye. The smaller ones are "nano-plastics", which are less than 1/1000000 meters (1 micron) in size and are generally impossible to see even with a standard microscope.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (National Institute of Standards and Tchnology, NIST) have studied two kinds of plastic products commonly used in daily life, one is the plastic film lined with plastic film (LDPE), which is commonly used in disposable hot drink cups, and the other is an oil-proof edible nylon bag on the surface of the baking gasket.

The researchers found that when these plastics are exposed to hot water, trillions of microplastics are released per liter of water. The concentration of nanoparticles released by edible-grade nylon bags into hot water is seven times higher than that of LDPE.

The researchers observed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) that the average size of these plastic particles was between 30nm and 80nm, with only a few particles larger than 200nm.

When you walk down the street with a cup of hot water, hot coffee and hot milk tea, you think about how the drink tastes. But unexpectedly, even if the food hygiene of the store is top-notch, there are billions of microplastics invisible to the naked eye in this hot drink. Seeing this, do you suddenly feel that the hot drink in your hand is not delicious?

Because the nano-scale plastic can enter the biological cell, it has a negative impact on the normal operation of the cell. The US FDA regulates the plastics of packaged food, such as food-grade nylon (often used in tea bags), which loses no more than 1 per cent of its quality at high temperatures. However, the new technology used in the NIST study shows that the quality loss is as high as 10%, far exceeding the safety standards of FDA.

In addition, the newsletter authors of the NIST study point out that there is no common test for the solubility of LDPE in hot coffee cups, only nylon plastics.

So, can you enjoy a cup of hot coffee? Of course, bring your own private cup before you go out, won't it solve the problem perfectly? Neither waste resources, nor worry about washing other people's cups.

Photo Source: Internet

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