It’s no secret that microplastics are finding their way into our bodies, and some are sticking around in our bloodstream and our organs too.

Ingested through the food we eat and the beverages we drink, microplastics can also be inhaled along with the oxygen we need to breathe; one thing we can say for sure is that at this moment in time, there seems to be little we can do to avoid microplastics entirely.

One of the most concerning issues, however, is how even our basic drinking water can be contaminated with these tiny fragments of plastic that, when settled inside our bodies, can affect our health and welfare, potentially even leading to digestive issues, infertility, and some sorts of cancer.

So it’s no wonder that scientists have devoted their time to finding ways to purify the food we eat, the water we consume, and the air we breathe; and thanks to a research team in China, we now have a fool proof way of removing tiny plastics from our water, before it touches our lips.

According to the study, which was published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters, this method of removing microplastics and nanoplastics is quite simple: by boiling the water, these impurities can be revealed and removed.

In a series of experiments, the team added tiny plastic fragments to water, with both hard and soft water studied.

They boiled the water, then filtered it to remove the micro and nanoplastics, with a success rate of up to 90%. This was most successful with hard water, as the team explain in their paper:

“This simple boiling water strategy can ‘decontaminate’ NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption. Our results showed that nanoplastic precipitation efficiency increased with increasing water hardness upon boiling. For example, from 34 percent at 80 mg L−1 to 84 percent and 90 percent at 180 and 300 mg L−1 of calcium carbonate, respectively.”

The biggest difference between the two types of water was the natural build up of limescale that accumulated as the water boiled, which helped to trap the microplastics and extract them from the water.

However, that’s not to say that the method didn’t work with soft water; the boiling process did remove some of the microplastics, but significantly fewer than the hard water, where the limescale assisted in the task.

With household equipment sufficient to follow this whole process at home, the researchers encourage the boiling and filtration of drinking water before it is consumed for those who wish to reduce the quantity of microplastics and nanoplastics entering their body:

“Drinking boiled water apparently is a viable long-term strategy for reducing global exposure to NMPs. Drinking boiled water, however, is often regarded as a local tradition and prevails only in a few regions.”

Though it might feel like a bit of a hassle, if this measure could prevent the accumulation of plastic fragments in your body, it could well be worth it in the long run.

Of course, this is merely an interim measure, and protecting our air, our foodstuffs, and our watercourses from plastic pollution should be a priority measure for governments around the world, if they wish to protect their citizens (and their healthcare systems) long into the future.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?