Does Crystal Geyser have microplastics?
Yes. We bought Crystal Geyser at a grocery store in Los Angeles and it tested positive for particles consistent with microplastics, with a PET fluorescence signature.
So did the other six brands we tested. Not one came back clean. What follows is the reading, how it was produced, and — the part that matters most — what a fluorescent dye can and cannot prove.
Crystal Geyser is the brand we ran through both processes as the worked example, so its filters appear in the study as the side-by-side comparison of counting versus polymer identification. It landed inside the same band as the rest of the brands.
What the reading is — and isn’t
The number above is a fluorescence signal strength, not a particle count. It comes from staining the sample with undiluted Nile Red, pushing it through a PCTE membrane, and measuring how brightly the retained material glows across three wavelengths. A brand with a higher reading produced a stronger signal from material consistent with plastic. Nobody counted 143 of anything.
The scored brands span a narrow range, from Path at 106 to Dasani at 143. Three brands were not assigned a number in this round. We are not going to rank those three against each other to fill out a list, because we do not have the data to do it honestly.
Nile Red binds hydrophobic material. Plastic is hydrophobic — and so are lipids, oils, and some organic debris. That is why every result here is phrased as particles consistent with microplastics rather than as confirmed plastic. Definitive polymer identification requires spectroscopy, not a dye. Our full error budget, including the contamination sources we know about and the ones we suspect, is published at thewatertest.com/limitations. Read it before you treat any number on this page as gospel.
These are results from an ongoing study, not a peer-reviewed paper. Our method is adapted from published work (Meyers et al. 2022; Leonard et al. 2022); those authors have not reviewed or validated it.
The other six brands
Crystal Geyser was one of seven bought together and run the same way. Reading any single brand in isolation is a mistake — the finding of the study is not that Crystal Geyser is bad, it is that the container is the common thread and every brand tested positive.
Read the full comparison, including how we identified the plastic type and why the aluminum cans scored the same as the plastic bottles, in We Tested 7 Bottled Water Brands for Microplastics.
People also ask
+Does Crystal Geyser have microplastics?
Yes. In our screening, Crystal Geyser tested positive for particles consistent with microplastics under Nile Red staining, with a dominant PET fluorescence signature. Nile Red stains hydrophobic material rather than plastic specifically, so this is a screening result, not chemical confirmation.
+What kind of plastic was found in Crystal Geyser?
The dominant fluorescence signature was PET — the plastic used in water bottles and can linings. The stain indicates material consistent with PET; definitive polymer identification requires spectroscopy, not a dye.
+Is Crystal Geyser safe to drink?
No regulator has set a health-based limit for microplastics in drinking water, so a positive screening result is not a safety finding. Crystal Geyser tested positive for particles consistent with microplastics, in the same range as the other six brands we bought — every one came back positive, whether it was bottled from purified tap, spring, or artesian water.
+Is Crystal Geyser BPA-free?
Crystal Geyser is bottled in PET (polyethylene terephthalate, plastic #1) — the plastic our screening detected. BPA is used in polycarbonate (plastic #7) and some epoxy resins, not in PET, so Crystal Geyser's bottle is not a BPA source. That is a separate question from microplastics: PET bottles don't contain BPA, but Crystal Geyser still tested positive for particles consistent with microplastic shedding in our screening.
+Does Crystal Geyser have PFAS?
We don't know — this screening detects particles consistent with microplastics and nothing else, so it can't say anything about PFAS in Crystal Geyser either way. PFAS is a different chemical class that needs its own lab test, and we didn't run one. Where we do have PFAS data is tap water: this site maps PFAS test results for US public water systems.
+Where does Crystal Geyser's water come from?
Marketed as spring water. Bottled in PET. That's the utility's/brand's own sourcing claim, not something we independently verified — our test measured what came out of the bottle, not where the water started.
+Which bottled water had the most microplastics?
By screening signal strength, Dasani read highest at 143 and Path lowest at 106 — a narrow band. Three brands (Fiji, Evian, San Pellegrino) tested positive but were not assigned a number this round, so we do not rank them against the rest. Every brand tested positive.
Test your own bottle
We ran Crystal Geyser once, from one lot. The only way to know what a bottle in your fridge is shedding is to test it yourself. The same Nile Red screen we used here comes as an at-home kit — stain a 100 mL pour, filter it, and count the particles consistent with microplastics under the scope in about 15 minutes.
Test bottled water for microplastics at home →Crystal Geyser is a registered trademark of its owner. The Water Map is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by that company. The brand name is used here only to identify the specific product tested. We purchased the product at retail, at our own expense, and received nothing from anyone in connection with this test.
Every test we run is published, including the ones that make our own method look bad. All of our data is open — see the license.