The brewing process for your favorite cuppa may have some extra benefits you didnt even know about.
If you have municipal water, your city or town should be testing it regularly for contaminants.
For kids especially, significant exposure to lead can become dangerous.
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They published their findings this week inACS Food Science & Technology.Lets see what they found.
How Was This Study Conducted?
They included both loose-leaf teas and commercially bagged teas.
Tea was then steeped for various amounts of timefrom just a few seconds up to 24 hours.
After steeping, the amount of metal left in each waternow teasample was measured.
For this phase, they tested empty tea bags made of cotton, nylon or cellulose.
What Did This Study Find?
Regarding the tea bags, researchers found that the cotton and nylon bags removed almost no heavy metals.
The cellulose bags, however, worked incredibly well.
Researchers surmise that this probably has something to do with the surface area of the cellulose bags.
The more surface area available for the metal ions to stick to, the better.
Nylon presents another issue, though.
They also discovered that black tea seemed the most efficient for removing heavy metals from the water.
Grinding up the leaves also increases surface area, providing even more capacity for binding.
The longer the steeping time, the more metal was removed.
Shindel notes that steeping your tea bag for a few seconds wont do much to remove the metal.
How Does This Apply to Real Life?
you might always reheat it if it cools down too much.
If you like using commercial tea thats already bagged, look for brands that use cellulose bags.
Those cute, fancy pyramid bagsthat usually cost more?
Those are typically made with nylon, so skip those.
An uncoated cloth tea bag with a fabric drawstring could be a solid choice.
Borosilicate glass infusers and teaware dont contain any heavy metals and are another good option.
[Its also] what makes tea leaves good at releasing flavor chemicals rapidly into your water.
Just put the leaves in your water and steep them, and they naturally remove metals.
U.S. Food & Drug Administration.Environmental Contaminants in Food.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Basic Information About Lead in Drinking Water.
Northwestern Now.Brewing tea removes lead from water.
