Does Honey have microplastics?
The short answer
Probably far less than you have read. A 2013 study reported fibres in honey and sugar and was widely repeated — then a 2017 replication with stricter airborne-contamination controls found much lower levels and attributed most of the original signal to laboratory dust.
Why Honey scores 28
The headline claim rests on one 2013 paper that a later replication substantially undercut
Fibre counts are the hardest measurement in this field to keep clean — airborne fibres land in open samples
Any real exposure route would be environmental, via the bees, not via the jar
A plastic squeeze bottle adds its own small contribution; a glass jar adds essentially none
Where the 28 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
- 4 / 25
- Measured release
- 8 / 25
- Polymer behaviour
- 4 / 10
- Processing
- 2 / 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
We list this page partly as a worked example of how a contested finding becomes an internet fact. The honest state of the evidence is that honey was probably never the problem the 2013 paper suggested, and that nobody has settled it either way with modern methods. If you want to act on something here, the container is the part you control.
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.
Honey in a glass jar
the only part of this you can actually change
Avoid plastic squeeze bottles
flexing the wall at every use is a real mechanism
Check the one in your kitchen
This page scores Honey 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.
- peer-reviewed2013
Liebezeit 2013 (disputed) — Reported fibres and fragments in honey and sugar samples, one of the first claims that microplastics were present in everyday sweeteners.
Limitation: Substantially disputed. A 2017 replication by Mühlschlegel and colleagues, using stricter airborne-contamination controls, found far lower levels and attributed much of the original signal to laboratory contamination. We cite it with that dispute attached, because citing it without would be misleading.
- peer-reviewed2018
Kosuth 2018 — Detected synthetic particles in 81% of tap water samples worldwide, in all 12 brands of beer tested, and in all 12 brands of sea salt.
Limitation: Overwhelmingly fibres, which are as likely to come from airborne contamination during sampling as from the product — the authors say so. It establishes ubiquity rather than any particular source.
- 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.