The health benefits of the tea we drink have been known for a long time. However, scientists from Northwestern University revealed an unexpected feature of tea. Tea leaves are capable of cleaning the toxic heavy metals from the water they brewed. This discovery shows that daily tea consumption can provide protection against dangerous metal pollution in drinking water, as well as reduce the risk of depression and diabetes.

Scientists discovered how tea leaves removed metal ions

Prof. The research team, led by Vinayak Dravid and Doctoral Student Benjamin Shindel, carried out a comprehensive study to examine how effectively the various tea species remove heavy metal ions in drinking water. Scientists first began by adding certain amounts of lead, chromium, copper, zinc and cadmium to clean water samples. After heating this water just below the boiling point, they added different types of tea leaves that are both pouring and commercially packaged and left to brew from a few seconds to 24 hours.

The results were remarkable. On average, a single bag of tea brewed in a cup of water was found to relieve about 15 %of heavy metal concentrations in the water. This effect was valid even for very toxic lead in high concentrations such as 10 pieces of million. Moreover, as the brewing time increased, the capacity of tea leaves to capture more metal ions increased.

The scientific mechanism behind this cleaning process is quite simple. The wide surface area of ​​dried, wrinkled and porous tea leaves enables the metal ions in water to stick. These adsorbed ions are trapped in the leaves, tea bags or leaves are removed from the water. Interestingly, this process does not require a real chemical reaction, and therefore observing a similar activity in all different tea types.

Researchers also discovered that tea bag materials play a role in this process. While the effect of cotton and nylon bags remained limited, natural -welded biologically fragmented cellulose bags showed significant amounts of heavy metal ion sucking. Just like the tea leaves, cellulose fibers were able to capture metal ions because they had a large active surface area.

Although scientists do not recommend the use of tea in large -scale water treatment with these findings, it draws attention to the potential effects of daily tea consumption on health in the long term. Benjamin Shindel, in his statements on the subject, “In a population, people have an extra cup of tea per day, we can see decreases in closely related diseases in time to be exposed to heavy metals over time,” he said.