Does Liquid Death Have Microplastics? Why the Aluminum Can Actually Matters (2026)

Does Liquid Death contain microplastics?

No lab has published a study measuring microplastics in Liquid Death specifically, so anyone quoting you a particle count for it is guessing. What we can do is reason from the packaging, which for microplastics is the single biggest variable, and here Liquid Death made a genuinely better choice than most of its competitors.

The bottled-water numbers that make headlines come almost entirely from PET plastic bottles. The 2024 PNAS study counted roughly 240,000 plastic particles per litre in bottled water, about 90% of them nanoplastics, and named PET, the bottle material, among the most common plastics found. The landmark 2018 Mason study found the most common polymer across bottled water was polypropylene, the material of the cap. In other words, the plastic in bottled water comes overwhelmingly from the plastic packaging. Liquid Death doesn't use a PET bottle or a plastic cap. It uses an aluminum can.

Why the aluminum can genuinely helps

Aluminum is a metal, and metals don't shed microplastic particles the way plastics do. Swapping the PET bottle for a can removes the primary source that the research keeps identifying. That is not marketing; it is mechanism. If your alternative is a single-use plastic water bottle, Liquid Death's can is very likely the lower-microplastic option for the same convenience.

It also avoids a subtler problem specific to purified bottled brands. As we covered in the Aquafina and Dasani audits, the 2024 PNAS team traced a lot of the nanoplastic they found to the reverse-osmosis membranes used to purify water. Liquid Death is spring water, not RO-purified municipal water, so it doesn't carry that particular membrane-shedding mechanism either.

The honest caveat: cans are lined with plastic

Here is the nuance the “aluminum is perfect” takes leave out. Bare aluminum would react with water and flavourings, so essentially every beverage can is lined on the inside with a thin polymer coating, historically epoxy-based (a source of the old BPA-liner concern), now often BPA-free acrylic or polyester coatings. That liner is a plastic layer in direct contact with the water.

Does the liner shed microplastic into the water? There is far less research on can liners than on PET bottles, and no published figure for Liquid Death. What we can say: the liner is an extremely thin, cured film rather than a thick molded bottle, it is not subjected to the same squeezing and heat cycling, and the dominant bottled-water particle sources in the literature are PET bottles and PP caps, neither of which a can has. So a can is not zero plastic contact, but it removes the parts the research most consistently implicates. “Better than PET, not plastic-free” is the accurate summary.

Liquid Death vs the alternatives

See the full shelf in our bottled water brands ranked guide and the bottled water microplastic database. For the premium-spring angle, our Fiji audit covers a spring brand that chose PET instead.

What to actually drink

• If you're choosing between single-use options, the can wins. Liquid Death, or any canned water, is a reasonable lower-microplastic pick over a PET bottle for the same grab-and-go convenience.
• For daily water, skip single-use entirely. A home filter into a glass or steel bottle is lower-exposure than any packaged water and costs a fraction as much.
• Don't let the aesthetic do the reasoning. The can helps because it's aluminum, not because it looks tough. A boring canned store-brand water gets you the same packaging benefit.