Microplastics have become a common source of pollution across the Earth — they have settled in the deep sea and on the Himalayas, stuck inside volcanic rocks, filled the stomachs of seabirds and even fallen in fresh Antarctic snow. They are even appearing inside humans.
Now, new research suggests that a simple, cheap measure may significantly reduce the level of microplastics in water from your tap (水龙头): boiling and filtering (过滤) it. In a study published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers from China found that boiling tap water for just five minutes — then filtering it after it cools — could remove at least 80 percent of its microplastics.
Crucially, this process relies on the water containing enough calcium carbonate (碳酸钙) to trap the plastics. In the study, boiling hard water containing 300 milligrams of calcium carbonate led to an almost 90 percent drop in plastics. But in samples with less than 60 milligrams of calcium carbonate, boiling reduced the level of plastics by just 25 percent. Additionally, the research didn’t include all types of plastics. The team focused only on three common types — polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene — and they didn’t study other chemicals previously found in water such as vinyl chloride.
Still, the findings show a potential path forward for reducing microplastic exposure — a task that’s becoming increasingly difficult. Even bottled water, scientists found earlier this year, contains 10 to 1,000 times more microplastics than originally thought.
Scientists are still trying to determine how harmful microplastics are — but what they do know has raised concerns. The new study suggests boiling tap water could be a tool to limit intake. “The way they demonstrated how microplastics were trapped through the boiling process was nice,” Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay, an environmental engineer of the University of Glasgow in Scotland who was not involved in the research, tells New Scientist. “We should be looking into upgrading drinking water treatment plants so they remove microplastics.”
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答案
C
解析
【导语】本文是说明文。文章主要介绍了一项关于减少自来水中微塑料污染的新研究。微塑料污染已遍及全球，甚至进入人体。中国研究人员发现，将自来水煮沸五分钟并冷却后过滤可能会显著降低自来水中的微塑料含量。研究虽未涵盖所有塑料类型和化学物质，但揭示了一种潜在解决方案。苏格兰环境工程师指出，该研究展示了煮沸法的有效性，并建议升级饮用水处理厂以推广应用。 【详解】 推理判断题。根据文章第一段中“Microplastics have become a common source of pollution across the Earth — they have settled in the deep sea and on the Himalayas, stuck inside volcanic rocks, filled the stomachs of seabirds and even fallen in fresh Antarctic snow. They are even appearing inside humans. (微塑料已经成为地球上常见的污染源——它们出现在在深海和喜马拉雅山上，被困在火山岩中，填满海鸟的胃，甚至落在南极的新雪中。它们甚至出现了在人类体内)”可推知，作者通过举例提出微塑料污染的问题。故选C。