Does Liquid Death have microplastics?
The short answer
Much less than a plastic bottle, and not zero. Aluminium cannot shed microplastic, which removes the bottle-wall problem entirely. What remains is a thin polymer liner between the metal and the water, so the can swaps a particle question for a liner-chemistry one.
Why Liquid Death scores 29
No polymer bottle wall — the single biggest source in bottled water is simply absent
A thin epoxy, acrylic or polyester internal liner does contact the water for the whole shelf life
Fully opaque, so the UV degradation pathway that Earth Action found can raise release up to 100× does not apply
Single-serve and sealed, so no repeated cap abrasion
Where the 29 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
- 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
No peer-reviewed particle count exists for canned water of any brand, including this one. The liner is the open question and it is a chemistry question more than a particle one — most published work on can liners concerns bisphenols, not microplastics. Anyone giving you a hard number for canned water is extrapolating.
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 water
the only mainstream format with no liner at all
Filtered tap in steel
no packaging per serving
Check the one in your hand
This page scores Liquid Death 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.