A new research study conducted in the United States on plastic toxicity in packaged bottled water should ring alarm bells in India, as well. It has been found that a litre of bottled water contains about 2.4 lakh toxic plastic pieces on average, 10-100 times higher than the earlier estimates that largely focused on plastics of larger sizes. The study, conducted by a research team led by Columbia University’s scientists and published in the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, should be a wake-up call for India as the country recorded the second-fastest growth rate after South Korea in the mineral water segment in a three-year period, from 2018 to 2021.
According to a United Nations report, India was 14th in the world in terms of the volume of bottled water consumed in 2021. The world produces more than 450 million tonnes of plastics each year, much of which eventually ends up in landfills. It would take about 1,000 years for a plastic bottle to decompose and in the meantime, plastic pollutes its surrounding environment. Apart from serious questions over the quality of packaged water sold in India, the type of plastics used for manufacturing the bottles — usually, polyethylene terephthalate — is also under scrutiny now. Here in Arunachal Pradesh, several packaged drinking water bottles are being sold in large numbers. In recent years, many water bottling plants have come up, selling packaged drinking water. The authorities should regularly check their quality.