Plastic in our tea bags, good or bad?

Invented around 1908, it fundamentally changed our drinking habits - the teabag. But it wasn't actually 'invented.' The teabag was an accident rather than design. A New York tea merchant, John Sullivan, started sending tea to customers in small silken packets for convenience. Many of his customers, thinking they were intended to be convenient infusions, placed them in their teapot. The teabag was born.

Sullivan went on to make the bags from gauze, making them more suitable for infusion, and their use swept across the USA. In 1953, Tetley introduced the teabag to tea drinkers in the United Kingdom, where now they are used in 96% of tea consumption. So, what are they?

Here the story is both environmentally good and potentially bad. Not all tea bags are made of the same stuff.

Many tea bags are made with added plastic, which is neither biodegradable nor recyclable. Some types of teabag leak millions of plastic particles into our drinks, not only from the sealing plastic but from the bag itself. Research has found that one plastic tea bag releases around 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion smaller nano plastic particles into your cup of tea!

In 2019, the magazine Country Living surveyed brands that did or did not use plastic. As of July 2019, major brands such as PG Tips, Tetley, Twinings 'heat-sealed' and 'string and tag' ranges, Yorkshire Tea, Lidl own brand used plastic. Among those that did not were Abel and Cole, Clipper, Co-op 99, Pukka herbs, Teapigs, Twinings pyramid range, and Waitrose Dutchy.

Suppliers respond by saying that there are no known ill-effects from ingesting what amounts to 60 micrograms – 60 millionths of a gram of plastic released by teabags. The truth is that it is too early to say whether there are potential harms. There is too little research on the outcome of the human intake of microplastics. The main concern is that plastic's ingredients or toxic chemicals absorbed by plastics may build up over time and stay in the environment. Plastics can act like a sponge, absorbing and concentrating toxins from the environment. Pesticide residues can cling to microplastic particles, and nano plastics can be absorbed through the gut. If this is so, then microplastics may act as piggyback carriers for toxins.

Environmental scientists warn that as plastic particles degrade to ever-smaller sizes in the environment, they present an increasingly higher potential for environmental toxicity.

Microplastics are all around us, in our water supply, and even in the air that we breathe. It is not yet clear if this is harmful or not. Each year, humans produce around 400 million tons of plastic worldwide. A significant proportion of this plastic ends up in the environment as litter, and most types of plastic take several hundred years to degrade completely. As this degrades, it will release a massive amount of additional microplastic to the environment. Will this be yet another catastrophic made-made disaster for our planet? To adopt a 'wait and see' approach would be foolish.

Prioritising people in nursing care.

There has been in recent years concern that care in the NHS has not been sufficiently 'patient centred', or responsive to the needs of the patient on a case basis. It has been felt in care that it as been the patient who has had to adapt to the regime of care, rather than the other way around. Putting patients at the centre of care means being responsive to their needs and supporting them through the process of health care delivery. Patients should not become identikit sausages in a production line. The nurses body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has responded to this challenge with a revised code of practice reflection get changes in health and social care since the previous code was published in 2008. The Code describes the professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses and midwives. Four themes describe what nurses and midwives are expected to do: prioritise people practise effectively preserve safety, and promote professionalism and trust. The

Ian Duncan-Smith says he wants to make those on benefits 'better people'!

By any account, the government's austerity strategy is utilitarian. It justifies its approach by the presumed potential ends. It's objective is to cut the deficit, but it has also adopted another objective which is specifically targeted. It seeks to drive people off benefits and 'back to work'. The two together are toxic to the poorest in society. Those least able to cope are the most affected by the cuts in benefits and the loss of services. It is the coupling of these two strategic aims that make their policies ethically questionable. For, by combining the two, slashing the value of benefits to make budget savings while also changing the benefits system, the highest burden falls on a specific group, those dependent on benefits. For the greater good of the majority, a minority group, those on benefits, are being sacrificed; sacrificed on the altar of austerity. And they are being sacrificed in part so that others may be spared. Utilitarian ethics considers the ba

When Finance Drives Destruction

Tackling climate change means stopping the funding of rainforest destruction, says a significant study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. The UK's financial services have provided directly over £8.7 billion to 167 different traders, processors, and buyers of forest-risk commodities (cocoa, rubber, timber, soy, beef, palm oil, pulp & paper) from 2013 to 2021. With direct and indirect investment, the figure rises to a staggering £200 bn. Whilst not all that investment is in destructive projects, the study concludes there is little transparency on the risk. Finance is the oil in the economic machine. But it also drives decisions. We all know the importance of money. We borrow to invest. So much depends on it, such as company pensions. Do we really know what our pension pots are doing? We invest for the future. But what kind of future? Is all investment good? Much investment is bad. Investment drives the nature of our economy. It drives our decisions as individuals,

The Thin End

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