The average litre of bottled water has nearly a quarter of a million pieces of microplastics and tiny, invisible nanoplastics, new research has found.

These have been detected and categorised for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.

Scientists had long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at US universities Columbia and Rutgers did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind.

Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per litre, averaging at around 240,000 according to a study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What are nanoplastics?

Nanoplastics are particles that are less than a micron in size. There are 25,400 microns – also called micrometers because it is a millionth of a metre – in an inch. A human hair is about 83 microns wide.

Previous studies have looked at slightly bigger microplastics that range from the visible 5 millimetres, less than a quarter of an inch, to one micron. About 10 to 100 times more nanoplastics than microplastics were discovered in bottled water, the study found.