喜歡用茶包泡茶喝？小心你可能喝了不少塑料

v. 降低

圖片來源：圖蟲創意

If your favourite brand of tea is using plastic teabags, you are probably getting a gutful of microplastics.

如果你最喜歡的茶飲品牌在使用塑料茶包，那麼你可能會喝一肚子微塑料。

A new study has found that a single plastic teabag steeped at a brewing temperature of 95 degrees Celsius releases around 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into a single cup. Let that sink in for a moment.

一項新研究發現，在95攝氏度的沏茶溫度下，用一袋塑料茶包泡一杯茶會釋放出116億個塑料微粒和31億個納米塑料微粒。讓我們先來思考一下。

Currently, we're estimated to consume over 74,000 particles of microplastics a year. According to this research, there's nearly 200,000 times that amount in a single cup of plastic teabag tea.

目前，我們估計人們每年要喝掉74000個塑料微粒。根據這項研究，用一袋塑料茶包泡茶，其微塑料含量幾乎是它的20萬倍。

Microplastics are everywhere. So much of our food is wrapped in plastic, for a start, and often ends up in the food itself. 

微塑料無處不在。首先，我們的很多食物用的都是塑料包裝，而且微塑料往往最終都會進入食物內。

In addition, it leaches out into the environment. We're making (painfully slow) headway eliminating useless plastic microbeads from body washes, and phasing out plastic straws and bags, but the damage has been done.

此外，它還滲入到了環境中。從沐浴露中淘汰掉無用的塑料柔珠，逐步淘汰塑料吸管和塑料袋，我們正（非常緩慢地）取得進展，但損害已經造成。

Plastic ends up in things like sea salt, canned fish, and honey, and chicken.

塑料最終進入到海鹽、魚罐頭、蜂蜜和雞肉中。

For many years, teabags have been made mostly out of paper, but recently some companies have been using plastic meshes instead.

多年來，茶包主要是用紙做成的，但最近一些公司在使用塑料網袋。

This isn't just a problem for the environment. According to researchers at McGill University in Canada, temperatures greater than 40 degrees Celsius can degrade plastics immensely. Even food-grade plastics.

這不僅僅是環境問題。加拿大麥吉爾大學研究員表示，40攝氏度以上的溫度極大地促進了塑料的降解，甚至是食品級塑料。

If you want to avoid it, your best bet is to choose paper teabags (do your homework, though, some paper ones are reinforced with plastic), or loose-leaf tea.

如果你想避免這一問題，最好的辦法是選擇紙製茶包（不過，你要好好研究一下，因爲有些紙製茶包是用塑料加固的），或者散裝茶葉。

This substance degrades rapidly in the soil.

這種物質在土壤裏會迅速降解。

to meet human needs indefinitely without degrading the environment

無限滿足人類需求又不使環境惡化（...這事兒似乎無解）