Does Canned tomatoes have microplastics?
The short answer
The can body cannot shed polymer, but tomatoes are the worst possible contents for a lined can — acidic, cooked inside the sealed can, and stored for years. This is the classic case where the liner earns its scrutiny.
Why Canned tomatoes scores 36
High acidity is the condition can liners are specifically formulated to resist, which tells you it is a real stressor
Retort sterilisation cooks the tomatoes against the liner after sealing
Shelf lives of two years or more mean migration continues long after production
Glass-jarred passata is the same product with no liner, and it sits on the same shelf
Where the 36 comes from
Five components, added. The page renders the parts rather than a stored total, so the number cannot disagree with the reasoning behind it.
- Packaging contact
- 10 / 30
- Use conditions
- 6 / 25
- Measured release
- 6 / 25
- Polymer behaviour
- 4 / 10
- Processing
- 10 / 10
What material touches the contents, over how much surface area, for how long. Glass and steel score near zero here; a film pressed against fatty food scores near the top.
Heat, abrasion, flexing, repeated opening, reuse beyond design life. The same bottle scores differently in a fridge and in a hot car.
What a laboratory actually counted, for this product or its category. A high number here means real particles were measured, not that the material looks suspicious.
How this specific polymer behaves — brittleness, fat solubility of its additives, thermal stability, whether it is a polymer named in existing restrictions.
What happened before you bought it. Retort sterilisation inside the pack, hot-filling, and pressurised brewing all happen at the most migration-favourable moment.
What we don't know
No particle count exists for canned food. The extensive literature here is on bisphenol migration from can liners into acidic contents, which is a chemistry question with much better evidence than the particle one. We score the structure and point at the better-evidenced concern rather than inventing a number.
This section is on every page in the database, including the ones where the answer is comfortable. How evidence grades work →
Better options
Ordered by how much they change, not by how much they cost.
Passata or tomatoes in a glass jar
identical product, no liner, usually the same price
Tetra-carton chopped tomatoes
a thin PE film instead of an epoxy liner — sideways, not up
Fresh or frozen
no retort step at all
Check the one in your kitchen
This page scores Canned tomatoes as a product. Formulations, packaging and suppliers change, and the specific item you own has its own condition — a scratched pan and a new one are not the same object. Scan yours for a score built from what is actually in front of you.
Scan my packaged foodSources behind this score
Each with the finding we use it for and the limitation that finding carries — because a study quoted without its boundaries is how this subject got so noisy.
- report2026
Earth Action 2026 — Estimated roughly 1,000 tonnes of microplastics migrate from packaging into food and drink annually — about 130 mg per person per year — with PET bottles responsible for around a third, and found UV exposure can raise release up to 100×.
Limitation: An industry-funded modelling exercise, not a laboratory study, and not peer-reviewed. We use it for the relative ranking of formats rather than for any absolute number.
- agency2026
US FDA — States that current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that the levels of microplastics detected in foods pose a risk to human health, while listing detection and characterisation as a research priority.
Limitation: A statement about the state of evidence, not a finding of safety. "Not demonstrated to be harmful" and "demonstrated to be harmless" are different claims, and the agency is explicit that the research is ongoing.
- peer-reviewed2020
Du 2020 — Take-out containers released 3–29 microplastic particles each, with polypropylene containers the most common source.
Limitation: Counts particles above the detection limit of the method used, so it says nothing about the nanoplastic fraction, which other work suggests dominates by number.