07/21/2026
There’s another offender to add to the list of everyday products contaminated with microplastics, and it’s one that’s almost impossible to avoid: Salt.
This might not exactly come as a shock, considering pretty much everything seems to contain microplastics these days. But the specific type of salt that’s most likely to be contaminated might surprise you — it turns out that artisan salts are usually the worst culprits.
While unrefined salts have been sold as the cleaner option for decades, the sheer amount of microplastics in the world have started to change this. “The marketing narrative around these products (‘pure, natural, unrefined’) doesn’t account for the fact that ‘natural’ now includes microplastics,” says . “Refined white table salt goes through more aggressive purification steps, (...) so the premium product that sounds cleaner may actually carry more contamination.”
Still, there’s no reason to spend too much time sweating the small things. There are ways we can minimize our exposure through specific types of salt, but it’s also more than likely not your biggest microplastic source.
