Does Fiji Water have microplastics?
The short answer
Almost certainly yes, like all PET bottled water — but no one has published a test of Fiji specifically. The bottle is the same PET measured at roughly 240,000 particles per litre across other brands, and Fiji ships further and warmer than most.
PET plastic bottle format profile
Why Fiji Water scores 61
PET bottle wall in contact with the water for the entire shelf life
A long tropical supply chain — bottled in Fiji, shipped by sea, then warehoused, all of which means weeks at ambient temperature well above a chilled shelf
Cap abrasion on the neck thread each time the bottle is opened and resealed
Square-shouldered bottle geometry, which gives a higher wall-area-to-volume ratio than a plain cylinder
Where the 61 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
- 18 / 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
Fiji was not in the Mason 2018 eleven-brand cohort and the 2024 PNAS study did not name its three brands. There is no published particle count for this label. Everything above is the PET category result applied to a PET bottle, which is a reasonable inference and not a measurement.
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.
Glass-bottled still water
no polymer touches the water except the cap liner
Filtered tap water in a steel bottle
removes the bottle from the equation entirely
Voss in glass
same premium-water positioning, different container
Check the one in your hand
This page scores Fiji Water 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-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.
- 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.
- 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.