Recent revelations that tea bags leach microplastics and nanoplastics into one’s steaming cup of tea, the second most consumed beverage in the world, as well as the growing emphasis on sustainability, have prompted many to bring into focus tea bags and tea packaging.
How one brews a cup of tea, and the way in which tea is presented by retailers for purchase, not only influences consumption, but also affects consumer choices.
The original means of tea steeping, which continues today, is to immerse loose tea leaves into water that has not quite reached boiling point. But, brewing leaf requires straining and cleanup, and it’s not something one can do on the go; hence, the popularity of tea bags.
A Brief History of the Humble Tea Bag
Most tea historians attribute the invention of the tea bag to a pair of inventive women, Roberta Lawson and Mary McLaren of Milwaukee, Wisconsin who filed a patent for a 'Tea Leaf Holder' in 1901.
Fellow tea importer, Thomas Sullivan from New York, an elegant man of Irish descent typified by his bushy mustache, is often credited with inventing the tea bag though his version came out seven years later.
Sullivan had tea sent out samples to potential customers in silken bags, which were not promoted as infusers; he had no clue that his bags would be transformed by those who received them. Instead of pouring out the contents as intended by Sullivan, buyers simply started dumping the silken bags in boiled water and found that a flavorful infusion resulted.
Once he understood the utility, Sullivan changed to mesh, it being more efficient in the brewing process. Sullivan’s bags came in more than one size, and people started using the larger ones to infuse a pot and the smaller ones for cups. His business boomed as steeping tea bags became the preferred method of brewing tea in America.
That said, if one really wants to give credit where it’s due, one must journey back to eighth century China during the Tang dynasty to find the origin of the tea bag. Of course, the Chinese had been drinking tea since 2500-2700 B.C.E., so the innovation of a paper bag stitched on all sides to preserve the tea’s aroma was maybe a long time coming. They could use thin paper because their tea was compressed or caked removing breakage as an issue.
It’s unlikely that Sullivan et al knew of the Tang Dynasty when they devised their bags. Indeed, the Tang Dyasty bags were shaped differently and made of a different material. They also lacked arguably the most important element of the tea bag: the drawstring.
Some forty years later, Lipton would introduce a transformative innovation: the Flo-Thru tea bag, enabling infusion from all sides rather than just two as in predecessors. Founder, Sir Thomas Lipton had already revolutionized packaging by selling by the pound, half-pound, and quarter-pound, with the advertising slogan: "Direct from the tea gardens to the teapot." With the new bags vastly improving the steeping capability, Lipton became a leader in the tea industry. Lipton, too, pioneered printing brewing instructions on the packaging.
Tea Bags and Teatime in England
In Britain, tea bags were seen for a long time as a rather gauche American habit. Dunking a packet into a cup of tepid water was an unseemly notion to the people whose tea culture had become known for High Tea to be taken between lunch and supper.
Moreover, material shortages during the two World Wars impeded tea introduction of tea bags to the British market.
However, in the 1950s, the emergence of gadgets that did away with unnecessary tasks began to popularize convenience over tradition. So, the idea of tea bags began to take hold in 1953 when Tetley, then a Yorkshire-based English tea company, introduced the bag to Britain.
Many had already started to use round strainers or oval shaped ‘tea eggs,’ which had two ends that screwed together and were hollow on thin inside. Tea leaves were put inside these utensils, small holes perforating hot water for infusing the leaves. But, alas, these still needed to be cleaned.
So, Tetley’s introduction of the bag was welcome at a time when Brits were ready to prioritize convenience over tradition. Still, it took a while to catch on. Once it did though, there was no stopping it. By the early ‘60s, just 3 percent of households in the UK used tea bags. Contrast this with 96% market penetration by 2007!
Tetley also introduced the round tea bag in 1992, the purpose of which was differentiation rather than innovation.
The flat nature of tea bags lent them well to being filled at first by broken leaves, and then by fannings and dust. Although these are of inferior quality to whole leaf tea, they offered the advantage of steeping quickly and creating a brew strong enough to be complemented nicely with milk and sugar, essential additives for many. Tea bags were also ideal for using cheap Crush Tear Curl (CTC) manufactured tea, which offered strong liquor and consistency desired by large companies.
In 1997, Brooke Bond, then a British company known for its premier brand PG Tips invented a three-dimensional tea bag designed for loose leaf. Called the pyramid bag for its shape, it allowed leaves to unfurl and expand. Some companies have even started using a larger variant called the diamond bag.
However, purists still say that any constraining of the leaves as they infuse prevents the brew from absorbing the full flavor of the leaves. Unlike conventional bags, which were closed by staples or glue, these bags were sealed ultrasonically, which stood as a significant innovation in the industry.
Pic 4 – Caption: Packaged tea bag from Madura Tea Company, Australia (left) to keep in the strong aroma of Lemon Myrtle, regular loose tea bag from Tetley, which is standard pretty much everywhere, and packaged pyramid tea bag made of biodegradable corn starch filled with one serving of whole leaf tea Darjeeling Second Flush tea from Luxmi Estates Makaibari Garden, sold now in markets internationally – Photo by SB Veda
Are Tea Bags Bad for You?
The invention of the pyramid tea bag gave rise to a potential drawback: it popularized the use of plastics and nylon tea bags for their sturdy character, which became ubiquitous even among traditional tea bags by the early 2000s because of the low cost. Typically the materials are composed of nylon and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). These bags have been found to leach tiny plastic particles into tea called microplastics and nanoplastics.
The first study on the subject was conducted in 2019 at McGill University of Montreal, Canada. It concluded that a single tea bag could release billions of tiny plastic particles into the cup.
Two of its co-authors, namely, Nathalie Tufenkji and Laura Hernandez, are avid tea-drinkers. Indeed, the study’s genesis came from Tufenki noticing that her tea bag was made of plastic – and, as she was researching water quality – she wondered if the bag was contaminating her cuppa.
Teaming up with Hernandez and others to design the study, they were astonished at the results. Speaking to Newsweek after publication, Hernandez said, “We were shocked to see the high number of plastic particles released into the beverage… We found that billions of particles are released into the tea versus only thousands found in other foods or beverages, such as bottled water.”
Microplastics are classified as plastics that are less than 5 millimetres. The microplastics that Tufenki and Hernandez measured in their tests ranged from that size to around a thousand times smaller, with nanoplastics being tinier. To put this in perspective, the microplastics are a thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair!
The US National Institutes of Health has weighed in since then. In a review article, published in 2023, they concluded that, “People who drink tea frequently are continually dosing themselves with billions of plastic particles, some of which may be tiny enough to enter human cells.”
However, others challenge the initial Canadian study, professing that its setup was flawed, and those conducted since carry confirmation bias. The Canadian team steeped several types of emptied tea bags bought in Canadian stores, rinsed them, and then steeped them in hot water.
Retailer, Kevin Gascoyne, also a Canadian and a member of the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada of Canada, is ironically one prominent skeptic of the original McGill study. He says that since the authors apparently failed to measure the ambient amount of plastic in the water used for steeping, the experiment was flawed from inception. This, he contends, led to a skewed result as the total plastic content at the end of the steeping came not only from the tea bags but also the water before steeping.
On reading the study, this writer sees both sides. Although the water used for both rinsing and steeping was purified by reverse osmosis (RO), which ought to have removed all plastics as the it’s also used to remove bacteria and viruses, the study does not mention measuring the plastic content prior to steeping as stated by Gascoyne. Nevertheless, in fairness to the researchers, it is not unreasonable to have expected the RO process to remove ambient plastic.
Gascoyne remains unconvinced: “They had a preconceived idea. So, they set it up like, for instance, they put like 30 tea bags in a litre of water without testing the water, first… it was proved afterwards that it was a poorly done study. And we never hear that this that the study was badly done.”
By contrast, Gascoyne references testing done by the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada and the UK Tea & Infusions Association, with vastly different results.
“A few years ago, we [the Tea & Herbals Association of Canada] did some lab studies with different types of tea bags in hot water,” he says. “And we were doing it as people make it [tea] at home. So, we were using either Britta [a commonly used household water filter] filtered water or tap water; and the problem that we had was that, a lot of the time, the constant – the water itself – had more microplastic than the water with the tea bag.”
Gaoscoyne says that the difficulty lies in the fact that tiny plastics aren’t evenly distributed in the water supply: “Because the microplastics travel in clouds, it seems that there's so much of it in the water already, that we couldn't even get a good test result.”
If one concedes that tea bags do leach billions of tiny plastic particles into a cup, the next logical question is, what are the impacts on the human body? Although in the literature review mentioned above, the NIH implies that tea bags are dangerous, they also reported a Malaysian study in 2021, which assessed the impacts of exposure to microplastics in various ways (breathing them in, absorption on the skin, and ingestion in food and beverages). It noted, “further research is needed to investigate the potential mechanisms of micro- and nanoplastics toxicity in human [sic.].” Also, this study was not limited to the type of plastics in tea bags. It included plastics released from bottles and polystyrene, which are not in tea bags.
If one does a simple Google search on whether microplastics and nanoplastics pose health risks, the result will likely state that they can contribute to a range of serious illnesses including cancer, fatty liver, inflammation causing heart disease, neurological disorders, and reproductive toxicity. That said, a similar search on whether plastics in tea bags cause health problems will likely say, “A direct causative link between microplastics from tea bags and specific human health problems isn't definitively established.” There’s a reason for this: plastic particles aren’t homogeneous substances – they’re comprised of a range of things – and those specific to tea bags can’t really be tested for health effects in isolation because we’re exposed to such a wide range of plastic particles. How can scientists differentiate the impact of tea bag micro and nano plastics from those found in general water and air pollution, chemicals in skin products, food pollution, and plastic containers?
Consequently, researchers have their work cut out for them to prove that nylon and plastic tea bags are truly harmful – or rather incrementally more of a hazard than what’s already out there. While this writer recommends loose leaf tea not only for the better flavor one gets from it but also because, it’s known to be safer that those sachets that are so convenient, steeping the odd tea bag isn’t likely going to kill you.
It's worth noting that microplastics have been found in items, which we either consume or are exposed to regularly such as drinking water, bottled water, seafood, salt, sugar, tea bags, milk, toothpaste, cigarette smoke, and other common articles.
The Emergence of Natural Tea Bags
Still, companies have responded to the alarm bells. Kathy Reynolds, Consumer Services Supervisor of the US-based retailer, Bigelow Tea, is emphatic that their tea bags are safe: “Please know that the tea bags which we use in manufacturing are not made of nylon,” she told WTN, adding “we use plant-based materials, such as abaca fibers and wood pulps which are compostable.”
They are not alone. The marketing director of Twinings says that the company’s paper tea bags contain no microplastics, being composed of “high-quality, plant-based paper, which consists of natural fibers from wood pulp and abaca.” Their tea bags are also closed using a non-heat-sealed, crimping, and folding method, with a natural cotton string to attach the tag. Being biodegradable Twinings has earned compostable certifications in some jurisdictions. Their pyramid bags for loose leaf tea also don’t contain plastics. They use corn starch, instead.
Indian tea giant, Luxmi Estates also uses biodegradable materials in their bags (which are all pyramid in variety). “Our pyramid tea bag is 100% made from corn starch,” says Sushuvan Sinha, the Head of Innovation at Luxmi. “So, this is not only safe but also gives customer the loose-leaf experience in a convenient format.”
In the end, retailers like Australian sisters Hannah and Amy Little, co-owners of the popular Brisbane-based tea shop, Tour de Tea, feel that when it comes to the form of tea consumed – tea bag vs. loose leaf – sustainability will increasingly matter. “We continue to see customers moving towards more sustainable options, in both a sense of global responsibility and personal well-being,” Hannah Little told WTN.
Tea Packaging
Since the days of the Tang Dynasty, which sold their compressed tea in ‘bricks,’ tea has been stored for trading in ceramic receptacles, iron cans, cartons, bamboo weaving, and plastic bags.
The tea caddy is probably the most well-known form of high-end package for tea. The name is derived from “catty” which was the measurement of a Chinese pound. As the Chinese tended to store their prized tea in expensive porcelain containers, European companies followed suit using porcelain or ceramic for their storage caddies. This evolved to using wood, pewter, tortoiseshell, brass, copper and even silver.
Today’s tea packaging can be divided into three categories:
Primary Packaging – that which comes into direct contact with the tea, providing the initial layer of protection to the food products, including metal cans, foil pouches, paper cartons, and bottles;
Secondary packaging – packaging which surrounds or contains the primary package like tea caddys with foil inner packaging, corrugated cases, and boxes; and
Tertiary Packaging – large containers used to store and ship secondary package all together in bulk.
While tea caddies typically use primary and secondary packaging, today’s resealable tea packages (akin to Ziplock bags) only need primary packaging to store the tea for regular use.
Sinha notes the continuum: “Packaging has undergone a fascinating evolution, balancing functionality, freshness, consumer convenience,” he says. “Previously tea was stored in wood as secondary packaging and had just paper wraps as primary, to protect the freshness and the aroma. But with tea being shipped so far, these days, sturdiness, is also required. Initially, branding was minimal but with so much competition in the market, it has become a top priority.”
Luxmi sells pyramid tea bags in elegant boxes. Other companies use wood and metal for gifting. Cylindrical containers have now become popular to contrast the classic cuboid box. However, unless one can transfer the contents into resealable packaging, the aroma of tea in say a metal tin, will dissipate far more quickly if left for long. Without resealing, tea gets exposed to moisture, which is probably the number one enemy of dry loose-leaf tea. Moisture promotes bacterial and fungal growth, corrupting the flavor of the tea.
Tea bags used to be packaged loose in the box but these days, they come individually wrapped. This, again, is to preserve the freshness and aroma of the tea.
Something to keep in mind regarding loose-leaf tea, especially specialty teas, is to never keep them in the kitchen pantry. While this may seem counterintuitive, tea absorbs smells, so if you don’t want your expensive white tea smelling like last night’s pot roast, store it outside the kitchen. Even keeping it in a hutch or bar if you have one, makes more sense. Let’s not forget that, as WTN has reported in the past, tea can make a great mixer for drinks!
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