The humble tea bag makes me anxious.

But who knows, this seemingly harmless small tea bag is not simple, it not only causes some hidden dangers to people's health, but also the pollution to the environment can not be underestimated.

The invention of the small tea bag was an inadvertent act of the businessman.

In June 1904, Thomas Sullivan, a tea merchant in New York, USA, put a small amount of tea samples in small silk bags and sent them to customers in order to reduce business costs. Confused customers tried to soak the small silk bags containing tea in boiling water and found that this method of making tea was very convenient and appreciated. Sullivan sensed a business opportunity in this matter and used gauze instead of silk to make the prototype of today's tea bag.

The development of tea bags has won the hearts of many consumers. "I can't imagine what life would be like without a bag of tea," Sarah Howe, director of public relations at Tetley Tea, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. "

Tea bags are not just paper and tea.

After a variety of improvements, the careless design of tea bags is more in line with the needs of consumers, and the number of tea bags is also on the rise.

Disposable tea bag, while bringing convenience to our life, will it in turn cause any hidden trouble to you and me? let's start with the material of the tea bag.

At present, the most common tea bags on the market are filter paper, non-woven cloth, PET (polyterephthalic acid), nylon and PLA (polylactic acid) and other materials.

Filter paper tea bags are generally made of plant fibers and some synthetic fibers. It has a certain bleach composition, and its sealing needle is easy to rust and dissolve heavy metals for a long time. If the hot-pressing sealing method is used, then the hot-sealed paper contains chemical fibers with low melting point, such as polypropylene fiber, ES fiber, etc., that is, contains trace plastics.

Non-woven cloth is not cloth, but plastic, generally using polypropylene, that is, pp material as the raw material, and then high temperature melting spinneret after a series of processing. Some nonwovens have harmful substances in the production process, resulting in the release of these harmful substances after a long period of high temperature brewing, which will have some adverse effects on the human body.

PET is a kind of polyester fiber, as a tea bag, it has the characteristics of high texture and high transparency, as well as bag-making and shape retention, and there is no dissolved matter when soaking, but this kind of fiber has relatively poor tolerance to acidity and alkalinity at high temperature, so the brewing of some tea may not be very good.

Nylon, also known as PA polyamide, the tea bag made with nylon is colorless and tasteless, transparent and heat resistant. In recent years, it is more popular to be used in scented tea, which has the advantages of strong toughness, not easy to tear, strong visual permeability, larger mesh and easier to brew tea flavor, but when brewing tea, harmful substances may be released when brewing tea for a long time above 90 ℃.

PLA polylactic acid degradable tea bag is made from renewable plant resources (such as corn), commonly known as "corn fiber". It has good biodegradability and can be completely degraded by microorganisms in nature under specific conditions, resulting in carbon dioxide and water, and does not pollute the environment. It is recognized as a promising new generation of sustainable green filter materials.

It is worth noting that at present, a large number of merchants on the market claim to use corn fiber tea bags and actually use fake corn fiber, that is, nylon tea bags. Consumers should pay attention to distinguish between nylon tea bag and corn fiber tea bag, there are two methods: one is to burn, hay, plant smell is corn fiber tea bag; the other is to tear hard, easy to tear corn fiber tea bag, on the contrary, it is nylon tea bag.

There may be hundreds of millions of plastic particles in the tea bag.

In front of big and small things, people are used to drinking a cup of tea. At this time, the most convenient way is to take out our small tea bags and inject boiling hot water into the cup to enjoy the strong flavor of tea. But people never expected that there was a big hidden danger in the small body of the tea bag!

A study published in September 2019 by McGill University in Canada in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that tea bags release tens of billions of plastic particles at high temperatures.

In the study, the researchers used four different tea bags, took out the tea and washed it, added hot water at 95 ℃, and then observed it with electron microscope and other equipment. It was found that there were about 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nano-plastic particles in each cup of water, mainly polyethylene terephthalate and nylon, which matched the material of tea bags.

To further study the effects of these plastic particles on organisms, the researchers put tiny aquatic organisms such as water fleas into tea bag solutions. The researchers observed that although water fleas did not die, significant behavioral effects on developmental malformations were observed.

More research is needed to determine whether plastic particles in tea bags affect human health, but the use of tea bags is advised to avoid, the researchers said.

Did you use a non-plastic tea bag today?

Tea bags containing plastic are not only a hidden danger to human health, but also a challenge to the environment.

According to the British Tea Association (UK Tea and Infusions Association), Britons who love tea drink 100m cups of tea a day, 96 per cent of which are in tea bags. Co-op, one of the top five food supermarkets in the UK, sells 4.6 million boxes of tea bags every year, equivalent to 300 million 67 million tea bags, of which the plastic content is estimated to be 9 tons. The environmental pollution caused by them is not to be underestimated.

At a time when the trend of plastic reduction is sweeping the world, environmental-conscious British tea manufacturers have begun to reduce plasticity, launching a wide range of "unplastic tea bags".

British tea company "Clipper" launched not to use polypropylene, but to use natural plant materials. These plant materials are made from the mixture of Abaca and PLA. Banana hemp comes from a kind of banana; PLA is "polylactic acid", a non-modified biopolymer.

The tea bags launched by "Brew Tea" are made of corn fiber. It is worth mentioning that its inner box will be accompanied by a small card describing the materials of all the packaging of the tea bag and the method of recycling.

"whole-leaf tea" is the first brand to remove the label of tea bag paper. Each of its tea bags is sealed with ultrasound rather than glue, making them biodegradable at an industrial level in between three and six months.

The tea bags launched by Eteaket are biodegradable. The label is made of paper and is not laminated, but is attached to the rope by ultrasonic waves. Its internal packaging is recyclable and can be composted at home. The brand is also committed to deplasticizing all its wholesale orders.

The pose has something to say.

Tea is a kind of drink that makes people feel happy and peaceful. Drinking tea in a more traditional way and brewing tea in bulk can also be very beautiful.