Does Evian have microplastics?
The short answer
Yes in the plastic bottle, which was one of the eleven brands measured in Mason 2018. Evian also sells the same water in glass, and that is a genuinely different product for this purpose — the format changes the answer, the spring does not.
PET plastic bottle format profile
Why Evian scores 65
In the Mason 2018 tested cohort, so this is measurement rather than inference
Natural spring water — the source is protected, which is the brand promise, and is not what the score is about
Long international supply chain from the French Alps to most of its markets
Sold in multipacks that sit in warm storage at home for weeks after purchase
Where the 65 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
- 23 / 30
- Use conditions
- 11 / 25
- Measured release
- 22 / 25
- Polymer behaviour
- 6 / 10
- Processing
- 3 / 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
The glass Evian line has not been separately tested. We score the PET bottle here because that is what the overwhelming majority of Evian sold actually is; if you buy the glass, the closest measured comparison is the glass result in Schymanski 2018, around 50 particles per litre, coming from the cap and filling line rather than the bottle.
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.
Evian in glass
same water, and the format is the whole difference
San Pellegrino glass
measured, glass, widely stocked
Filtered tap water
the cheapest way to stop buying bottles
Check the one in your hand
This page scores Evian 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 drinking waterSources 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.
- peer-reviewed2018
Mason 2018 — 93% of 259 bottles across 11 international brands contained microplastic; an average of 325 particles per litre across all size classes.
Limitation: Nile-red staining and optical microscopy only reliably resolve particles above ~100 μm, so its counts are a floor, not a total. Lower numbers here do not mean less plastic than the 2024 study — they mean a less sensitive method.
- peer-reviewed2018
Schymanski 2018 — Compared formats head to head: single-use PET averaged 14 particles/L, returnable PET 118/L, glass bottles 50/L and beverage cartons 11/L.
Limitation: The glass result is the one people skip. Glass was not zero — particles came from the cap and the filling line, not the bottle wall. Small sample per format.
- peer-reviewed2024
PNAS 2024 (Qian) — Counted roughly 240,000 plastic particles per litre in bottled water, about 90% of them nanoplastics that earlier optical methods could not see at all.
Limitation: Three unnamed US brands, small sample. It measured particles, not absorption or any health outcome, and the brands were not disclosed — so it cannot be attributed to a specific label.