Does Spindrift Have Microplastics? What Its BPA-NI Can Liner Means

Are Spindrift cans lined with plastic?

Yes, in the sense that matters. Like almost every food and drink can, a Spindrift can has a thin polymer coating on the inside so the drink never touches bare aluminum. Without it, acidic drinks would react with the metal and change the taste. Spindrift’s FAQ refers to it directly as a “can liner”. It is not a separate plastic bag; it is a sprayed or rolled-on film, far thinner than a bottle wall.

Spindrift sells its sparkling water in 12-ounce aluminum cans. Its FAQ notes that the original Spindrift soda came in glass bottles and needed refrigeration; the current line is shelf-stable and canned. We found no current Spindrift product in glass or PET. That means the liner is the only polymer the drink touches before you open it.

What the coating is made of, Spindrift doesn’t say. The US can industry lists the families now used in food cans as “acrylic, polyester, non-BPA epoxies or olefin polymers”, but that list describes food cans in general, not Spindrift’s beverage cans. Our guide to can liners explains the coatings and the rules in more depth.

Are Spindrift cans BPA-free?

Spindrift’s exact answer, under the question “Are Spindrift cans BPA-Free?”, is: “All our cans are using a BPA-NI can liner, or BPA-not intended. This is the industry standard lining that’s been reformulated without the use of BPA, or bisphenol A and BPS.”

“BPA-NI” is a narrower claim than “BPA-free”. It means BPA is not intentionally used to make the coating. It is not a promise that a lab would find zero BPA in every can, since trace contamination is a separate question that the term doesn’t address. Spindrift goes a step further than many brands by naming BPS as well. The Can Manufacturers Institute says the industry does not intentionally add BPF, BPB or BPS as substitutes in can linings. Neither statement tells you what the liner is made of, and a BPA-free label does not by itself mean a coating releases nothing. Our page on whether BPA-free plastic is safe covers that gap.

On BPA itself, regulators disagree. The FDA’s page says its “current perspective, based on its most recent safety assessment, is that BPA is safe” at current levels in food. Europe’s food safety agency set a much lower tolerable intake in 2023, and the EU has moved to ban BPA in food-contact materials. A BPA-NI liner sidesteps that argument for the chemical it names.

Does Spindrift have microplastics?

Nobody has published a count. We found no study, regulator test or brand disclosure measuring plastic particles in Spindrift. Spindrift’s FAQ does not mention microplastics. Any “Spindrift microplastics per can” figure you see online has been borrowed from a different product or invented. A useful test would sample several flavors and lots, count down to at least 1 µm, confirm each polymer, and compare against blanks, so the result could be traced to the drink rather than the lab.

The closest evidence is category-level. A 2024 study in Heliyon tested one unnamed soda brand bought in four US cities in cans, glass and plastic bottles, using an infrared method that sees particles from 20 to 500 µm. It found 168 ± 73 particles per 100 mL in cans, 104 ± 30 in plastic and 228 ± 84 in glass, and concluded that “no distinguishability was revealed between the different container types”. The authors identified the can coating as a polymethyl methacrylate-type material and called their explanations for where particles came from speculative. Particles may also come from ingredients, water and filling lines, which a can doesn’t change.

That is one soda, not Spindrift, and not sparkling water. But it points the same way as the bottled-water evidence: the container is one source among several, and no format is particle-free. Our Voss review sets out why glass-bottled water has tested no cleaner than PET in three studies.

What can come out of a can liner?

Two different things, and they are often blurred. One is chemicals migrating from the coating into the drink, such as BPA from older epoxy liners. The other is solid particles. Most liner research measures the first.

Health Canada’s survey of 72 canned drinks bought in April 2007, when BPA-based linings were common, found BPA in almost all of them at 0.032 to 4.5 µg per litre, averaging 0.57 µg/L. It judged exposure from canned drinks “extremely low”. A 2021 study of 27 beer cans from 16 countries found epoxy coatings in every can and measured additives such as the plasticizer DEHP inside the coating film. It measured what was in the coating, not what reached the beer. Neither study counted microplastics, and neither tested Spindrift or a BPA-NI liner.

Spindrift is mildly acidic from fruit juice and carbonation, and acidity can affect migration in general. We found no data showing what that means for a modern BPA-NI coating. See microplastics vs PFAS vs BPA for how the three concerns differ.

Use the App

Is your seltzer habit adding up?

Scan the cans you buy. The app reads the format and liner disclosure, shows what has been tested for that brand, and suggests a lower-plastic way to get your bubbles.

Spindrift vs LaCroix, bubly and Topo Chico: what does each brand say?

For the can question, Spindrift’s wording is the most specific of the four, because it names both BPA and BPS. LaCroix’s statement covers BPA only. We could not find a liner statement for bubly or Topo Chico on their public pages, which doesn’t mean their cans use BPA, only that the brands haven’t said. None of the four names its coating chemistry.

On PFAS, Consumer Reports tested one product per brand in 2020. Topo Chico’s maker said it would make improvements, and a retest of three samples in 2021 averaged 3.9 ppt. PFAS are chemicals that mostly come from source water, not from the can. Our sparkling water guide compares more brands by packaging, and our Liquid Death review covers another can-only brand.

Do LaCroix and bubly cans have a plastic lining too?

Yes. The coating is not a Spindrift feature; it is how drink cans are made. Every brand in the table above sells in coated aluminum, and so do the canned versions of glass-bottle brands. What differs is how much each brand tells you. LaCroix’s 2019 statement says its cans are produced without BPA liners, but like Spindrift it does not name the replacement. For bubly we found no statement at all on the brand’s public pages.

One practical difference between a can and a screw-cap bottle is worth noting, as our inference rather than a measured result. A can is opened once with a metal tab, so there is no plastic cap rubbing against a plastic neck each time you reopen it, which is a documented source of particles in PET bottles (see do plastic bottle caps shed microplastics?). A can’s trade-off is the coating, which covers the lid as well as the body. In the beer-can study above, epoxy coated the lids inside and out.

How much real fruit is in Spindrift?

Spindrift says it uses “real squeezed fruit – including fruit juices, fruit purees, and extracts from the same fruit.” In its packaging refresh it changed how it calculates the juice percentage on labels, from a reconstituted-from-concentrate basis to a not-from-concentrate one, and says this was “not to the amount of juice in our recipe.” Some examples from its table:

Juice makes the drink slightly more acidic and gives it a few calories. It doesn’t change what the can is made of, and we found no evidence that juice content changes particle counts.

Has Spindrift been sued over PFAS, BPA or microplastics?

Not that we could find. We searched federal court dockets on CourtListener for cases naming Spindrift Beverage and found none concerning PFAS, BPA or microplastics. Spindrift has appeared in unrelated federal cases, which we haven’t described here because they have no bearing on what is in the can. If a case appears, an allegation in a complaint is not a finding; we would report it only from the court record.

What the evidence does not establish

• A Spindrift particle count. No test exists in the sources we reviewed.
• The liner chemistry. Spindrift says BPA-NI and no BPS; it does not say epoxy, acrylic or polyester, and we won’t guess.
• That a can sheds fewer particles than glass or PET. The only matched comparison we found, for one soda, saw no reliable difference.
• Current PFAS levels. The 0.19 ppt result is one product, tested in 2020.
• A health effect. The FDA says current evidence does not show that the levels of micro- and nanoplastics detected in foods pose a risk to human health.

What’s the lower-plastic way to drink seltzer?

1. If you like Spindrift, a can is a sensible format. Store cases cool, don’t leave them in a hot car, and drink a can once opened rather than resealing anything.
2. Pour it into a glass if you prefer to keep your mouth off the coated rim and the outside of the can.
3. For daily seltzer, carbonate at home. Filter tap water with a filter certified to NSF/ANSI 401 for microplastics, then carbonate in a glass carafe. Add a squeeze of real lemon or lime. See the best water filters for microplastics.
4. Ask the brand. Write to Spindrift’s customer service and ask what the liner is made of. A specific answer is more useful than any label.