Researchers have identified another great reason to drink tea: naturally cleaning water.
Researchers from Northwestern University have found that tea leaves are absorbing some harmful metal from water, such as lead and kadmium, which prevents us from removing them. Researchers emphasize that tea leaves should not replace water filters, but their work alleviates how this beloved drink simply protects our health. Their Studyna -published Monday in the journal ACS FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYFinally gives tea drinks a real reason to feel better with coffee drinks.
“I'm not sure that there is anything unique noticing about tea leaves as a material,” Benjamin Shindel said, the first with a study and an engineer at Northwestern University, told a university statement. “But what is special that tea happens to be the most burned drink in the world. You can crush all kinds of materials to get a similar metal -remediating effect, but that's not necessary practical. In tea, people don't have to do any extra. Just put the leaves in your water and they are steep, and they naturally remove the metals.”
That's because the heavy metal ions – atoms of heavy metal with electric charges – which attract the surface of the tea leaves. To investigate this possession, Shindel and his colleagues measured metal levels, including lead, chromium, copper, zinc, and kadmium, in heated solutions before and after stepping with different types of tea, tea bags, brewing techniques, and times of pag -steeeping.
Their method has resulted in many noticeable observations. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most important factor in the tea's ability to filter heavy metal is time: longer tea steep, heavier metal -filtered metals from water.
“Some people cook their tea for a few seconds, and they won't get much remediation. But making tea for longer or overnight – like iced tea – will recover most metal or maybe even close to all metal in water,” Shindel explained.
Another important aspect is the area of the tea surface. In short, the higher the surface area, the more binding sites for metal ions and the heavier tea leaves can absorb. This means using ground tea leaves compared to loose tea leaves, or vice versa, do not significantly change the absorption of the leaf metal.
“When tea leaves are processed [tea]They are wrinkled and their pores are turned on, “Shindel said.” The wrinkles and pores add more places to the surface. Grinding the leaves also increases the surface area, providing more capacity for sealing. “
Tea bags play a role in the absorption of contaminants. The team noted that while cotton and nylon bags slightly absorbed any heavy metal, cellulose bags (plant -based) absorbed a significant amount. “Nylon tea bags are problematic because they release microplastics, but most tea bags used today are made from natural materials, such as cellulose. It can release cellulose micro-particles, but that's just the fiber our body can handle,” Shindel said. He also added that cellulose filter ability can also cause it to potentially develop a higher surface area than synthetic materials.
Generally, researchers have concluded that a typical cup of tea (a water mug with a tea bag steeped for three to five minutes) can filter approach approximately 15% of the lead from the water -even if the water contains toxic levels of lead. And as researchers emphasize that tea will not be a solution to a real crisis in drinking water, their work shows practical insights that may affect future public health research.
“Throughout the population, if people drink excessive cups of tea each day, perhaps over time we will see denials of diseases that closely relate to exposure to heavy metal,” Shindel said. “Or it will help explain why populations that drink more tea may have lower rates of heart disease and stroke disease than populations with lower tea consumption.”
In other words: tea drinks, keep doing what you do.
