Studies have reported plastic particles in honey, but their measurements answer different questions. A Malaysian survey supplied microscopy-based counts with limited FTIR confirmation. A separate pouch-storage experiment identified particles with spectra matching packaging. These studies do not establish one concentration for honey, and neither measured human health outcomes.12
What this page covers
Honey is both a biological product and a food that is harvested, processed, and packaged. An occurrence survey measures what was recovered from selected honey samples. A storage experiment asks whether the material found after specified storage is consistent with the package. These designs should remain distinct. Studies of sugar, bee behavior, or soil are not substituted for measurements of honey.
What the survey found
Ibrahim and colleagues compared honey from stingless bees and honey bees in Malaysia. Samples came from farms and stores. The paper reports the following means for objects classified as microplastics under microscopy. The means include visually counted fibers and fragments; they are not totals in which each object received chemical identification.1
Scroll horizontally for methods and limitations.
| Honey group | Reported count | Method | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stingless-bee honey | 8.18 ± 2.57 microscopy-classified MPs/g | Digestion, filtration, stereomicroscopy | PE confirmed only in a selected particle subsample. |
| Honey-bee honey | 5.52 ± 1.13 microscopy-classified MPs/g | Same workflow | Group differences cannot isolate bee species from environment, processing, or packaging. |
Fibers were the predominant observed form. The results discuss size classes spanning small fibers through millimeter-scale objects, while the abstract provides a narrower summary range. One result-specific size estimate for stingless-bee honey was 1.100 ± 0.653 mm. It should be read as a dimension of the microscopy-classified material, with the paper’s identification limits retained, rather than a size distribution for fully confirmed plastic.1
How much chemical confirmation was done
The survey diluted honey, used hydrogen peroxide digestion, and filtered the resulting material before microscope examination. Selected objects underwent a hot-needle test, surface imaging, and FTIR analysis. The authors state that only six selected particles could be chemically identified because of size limitations, and those objects were polyethylene. This establishes polyethylene presence in the selected material. It does not demonstrate that every counted fiber was polyethylene or that naturally derived fibers were absent.1
The reported contamination precautions included covered equipment, filtered solutions, rinsing, an airborne-control filter, and a room with air filtration. The inspected methods and results do not provide numerical blank counts, a correction calculation, or recovery validation sufficient to turn the visual total into an individually confirmed polymer count. This is a material limitation when fibers dominate a sample.1
What the pouch experiment adds
Katsara and colleagues studied honey in flexible plastic pouches under outdoor, refrigerator, and dark/dry storage conditions. Their workflow used dilution, controlled warming, peroxide, density separation, and successive filters. Raman spectra of recovered particles were compared with the packaging. The inner material was polyethylene, with polyethylene terephthalate associated with the outer packaging. This offers product-specific evidence consistent with packaging-related contamination.2
The paper also reports numerical particle estimates, but no pouch-release count is accepted on this page. The analysis used selected regions of filters with different particle densities and extrapolated beyond those fields. Some runs were marked as contaminated by a reagent container. Honey crystallization and sample recovery changed with storage, and results differed between batches. These details prevent a simple statement that storage always produces the same rate of increase.2
The study separately used GC-MS to identify extractable chemicals. A dissolved chemical result is not a microplastic count, and it is not interchangeable with the Raman particle evidence. The inspected article does not justify turning those chemical findings into a particle mass exposure for consumers.2
How to interpret the evidence
The survey counts are normalized to honey mass. Older exploratory honey results used a liquid-volume denominator and broad FTIR extrapolation across several foods. Those values cannot be compared directly or converted with an assumed honey density. Differences in digestion, object selection, size coverage, and chemical identification can explain part of the variation before any conclusion is made about geography or product quality.13
A useful next step is independent confirmation using representative honey sampling, quantified blanks, recovery tests, consistent dimensions, and chemical identification that covers the counted material. Until then, the evidence supports carefully labeled source results and packaging experiments. It does not support a typical serving count, a category-wide health claim, or an assurance based only on the absence of a visible particle.12
Regulatory status
The supplied EFSA statement is a dated scientific assessment that calls for improved methods and quality assurance. Its historical legislative description is not treated as a complete statement of current law. Neither that assessment nor the drinking-water measurement decision supplies a particle limit for this food category.45 A research concentration is not a product compliance determination. See source scope and versions.
References
- Detection of microplastics in honey of stingless bee (Heterotrigona itama) and honey bee (Apis mellifera) from MalaysiaResearch article
- Microplastic Migration from Plastic Packaging into HoneyResearch article
- Microplastics in Honey, Beer, Milk and Refreshments in Ecuador as Emerging ContaminantsResearch article
- Presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in food, with particular focus on seafoodScientific statement
- Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2024/1441: methodology to measure microplastics in water intended for human consumptionLegal instrument