Around 79% of plastic produced since the 1950s is now in landfills or the environment – that’s 6.5 billion pieces currently filling the shores of our beaches and the stomachs of our wildlife. And while we may worry daily about this accelerating environmental crisis, we rarely stop to think about it could affect our bodies.

Showerstoyou.co.uk analysed the Plus Plastic report by Orb Media to discover which branded bottled waters contain the most possibly harmful microplastics.

Microplastics are small fragments of plastic, between 0.33 and 5mm in size. But while tiny, they can contribute to rubbish patches in our oceans and potentially toxic to wildlife ingesting them.

Where do the water brands place?
Showerstoyou can reveal that the bottled water brand containing the highest number of microplastics per litre is Nestlé Pure Life – 10,390 particles were found.

The second worst, with a similarly shocking number of 5,230, is the Indian bottled water provider Bisleri.

Thereafter, the brands in descending order with the highest number of particles found include: Gerolsteiner (5,160), Aqua (4,713), Epura (2,267) and Aquafina (1,295).

At the other end of the bottle brand scale, the brand whose maximum number of microplastics was the smallest per litre, is San Pellegrino with a modest count of 74.

The second ‘best’ result came from Evian, which displayed 256 microplastics per litre. Evian was followed by Dasani (335), Wahaha (731) and Minalba (863).

How many microplastics could we consume within one year as a result?
As a result of these figures, Showerstoyou was then interested to discover the extent of these figures after one year – specifically how many microplastics a person could consume in 12 months.

Following calculations*, results reveal our bodies could host up to a staggering 640,024 microplastics, if we choose to drink Nestlé Pure Life.
If Bisleri is the preferred choice, up to 322,168 microplastics could be swimming in our bodies.

The potential consumption in one year of the remaining brands are as follows:
Gerolsteiner (317,856), Aqua (290,321), Epura (139,647), Aquafina (79,772), Minalba (53,161), Wahaha (45,030), Dasani (20,636), Evian (15,770) and finally San Pellegrino (4,558).

*Method used to calculate potential yearly consumption: Highest microplastic levels found in each bottled water brand was multiplied by the average global bottled water consumption per capita (listed at 61.6L in 2019), and rounded to the nearest whole number.

(source: www.showerstoyou.co.uk)