Once again, the internet is warning us that a healthy habit might actually be harming us,

and the latest scare is about tea.

Are you actually brewing up a cup of microplastics and heavy metals and chemical additives?

Let's take a closer look.

Welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where we take a closer look at nutrition news, research, and trends so that you can feel more confident about what you eat.

I'm your host, Monica Reinagle, and today I want to address a question that has been popping

up in my inbox a lot lately. Are tea bags leaching harmful chemicals into our beverages? And if so,

what can we do about it? Concerns about microplastics, heavy metals, and chemical additives in tea bags have been making

the rounds online, and it's got a lot of people wondering whether this comforting daily ritual

might actually be doing more harm than good. Honestly, I'm not surprised that these warnings

are getting so much traction.

There's a weird sort of schadenfreude that seems to come up whenever a supposedly healthy habit is alleged to have a dark side. I think the internet loves nothing more than to take

our sources of comfort and turn them into sources of stress.

But as you might have guessed, the real story is a little more nuanced, a little less

sensational. There are some legitimate concerns here, but I don't think we need to toss out

our entire tea collection. So today, let's take a closer look at the nature

of these purported hazards, what the risks might be, and most importantly, put all of this

into perspective. Now, you may have noticed that I just used both the words hazard and the word risk.

And you might be wondering, is there actually a difference between those two things?

And there is a difference.

And it's an important one.

In fact, I devoted an entire episode to the difference between these two things.

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