Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:
- Some dictionary writers (ca. late 1400s IIRC) wanted spellings that seemed fancier like French and Latin, which is why e.g. the silent B in debt was added ‘artificially’.
- The printing press was invented right in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift so old spellings got “locked in” even though spoken English continued to change significantly for a long time afterward.
When we’re talking about molecules, millions is usually an extreme understatement. PPB (parts per billion) is a common measure for contaminants.
But PPB is still an enormous quantity. Remember Avogadro’s number (used to relate count to grams) is on the 10^23 scale (aka thousands of billions of trillions). Even 999 million is a drop in the ocean there.
EDIT: The journal abstract lists the leached nanoparticles as 10^9 (billions) per mL, and the uptake by human-derived intestine cells as 100 micrograms/mL. So yeah this is coverage by a journalist who can’t math.