Does Plastic sippy cup have microplastics?
The short answer
Yes, at a moderate level, and the valve matters more than the cup. A sippy cup is a plastic vessel that is filled several times a day, dropped constantly, put through the dishwasher and often carried warm — the wear profile is harsher than any adult bottle.
Why Plastic sippy cup scores 49
Whole-cup polymer contact, filled multiple times daily over a period of years
Dropped repeatedly, which is impact damage to the polymer surface by definition
Daily dishwasher and steriliser cycles, both heat and abrasion
Milk is fatty, and warm milk is the common case
Where the 49 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
- 18 / 30
- Use conditions
- 18 / 25
- Measured release
- 8 / 25
- Polymer behaviour
- 5 / 10
- Processing
- 0 / 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
Not measured. The infant-bottle study is the nearest relative and it concerns a different temperature regime — sippy cups are not usually filled at 70°C. We have applied the mechanism and not the magnitude, which is why this is grade C and the bottle page is grade A.
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.
Stainless steel toddler cup
inert body, and it survives the dropping
Glass with a silicone sleeve
workable for older toddlers
Replace cloudy or scratched cups
surface damage is the mechanism
Check the one in your nursery
This page scores Plastic sippy cup 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 baby & toddlerSources 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-reviewed2020
Li 2020 (Nature Food) — Polypropylene infant bottles prepared to WHO sterilisation guidance released 1.3–16.2 million microplastic particles per litre of formula.
Limitation: Release scaled with water temperature — the highest numbers came from the 70°C step WHO recommends for killing bacteria. The study explicitly did not recommend abandoning that step, and no health outcome was measured.
- peer-reviewed2022
Zangmeister 2022 (NIST) — Nylon bags, LDPE food-storage bags and similar single-use plastics shed trillions of sub-100 nm particles per litre in ordinary contact with water.
Limitation: Deionised water at controlled temperature. Nanoparticle counts are inherently large numbers; the study is about their existence and quantity, not their fate in the body.