Sorry to add a bit of stress to your relaxing nightly cup of tea, but research published in npj Science of Food suggests a plastic tea bag could be filling your body with microplastics and chemicals that mess with your endocrine system.

Researchers at Recep Tayyip Erdogan University in Türkiye tested 28 tea brands, dunking plastic, paper, and loose-leaf varieties into boiling water. Those fancy-looking mesh plastic teabags are apparently nothing more than an expensive microplastic delivery system, shedding anywhere from 555 to nearly 2500 microplastic particles into a single cup of tea.

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Compared to loose-leaf tea, which takes about a pound of leaves to hit those same numbers.

Your Tea Bag Might Be Releasing Thousands of Plastic Particles Into Every Cup

Scientists also detected bisphenol A, aka the dreaded BPA, the very chemical every water bottle you bought for the past 10 years has made clear that it does not contain.…