The complaint contends that despite the risk of microplastic exposure and food contamination, there is no warning, disclaimer or disclosure on product packaging.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
If you look in my pantry, you will find it stocked with plastic Ziploc bags of all sizes.
In part, it’s because I find them helpful for food storage as well as some of my work activities. I am sure many Legal Insurrection readers use sealable plastic bags daily without trepidation.
Now, in the land of the setting Sun and lunatics, a California woman is suing the maker of these bags because they supposedly emit microplastics.
The lawsuit — filed by Linda Cheslow of Santa Rosa, California, in the U.S. District Court for Northern California April 25 — claims that Ziploc’s assertion that its products are freezer- and microwave-safe is incorrect and misleading, causing customers to unknowingly expose themselves to dangerous microplastics “during routine kitchen practices.”
“In reality, these Products are made from polyethylene and polypropylene — materials that scientific and medical evidence shows release microplastics when microwaved and frozen — making them fundamentally unfit for microwave and freezer use,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint names several specific products, including but not limited to: pint-, quart- and gallon-sized freezer bags; quart- and gallon-sized slider freezer bags; quart- and gallon-sized slider storage bags; and storage containers.
Ziploc is being sued over claims its bags release harmful microplastics into food increasing risks of cancer and dementia. pic.twitter.com/EMlNpdMSyY
— Dr. Dennis Walker (@drdenwalker) January 11, 2026
The lawsuit will focus on the lack of warnings and looks like it will encompass all impacted American residents.
The complaint contends that despite the risk of microplastic exposure and food contamination, there is no warning, disclaimer or disclosure on product packaging to inform consumers of the potential health hazards posed by using the items as directed. This is particularly dangerous given that the Ziploc products are meant to be used on a daily basis during routine kitchen activities, the filing argues.
…Reasonable consumers would not have paid as much for the Ziploc containers and bags, or bought them at all, had they known the products could leach harmful microplastics into their food, the case asserts.
The Ziploc bag lawsuit looks to represent all United States residents who, during the applicable statute of limitations period, purchased any of the Ziploc products listed on this page for purposes other than resale.
I have covered the topic of microplastics before, as it looked like it might be revving up to be the next big environmental cause to target big business and corporate dollars.
I suspect the arguments supporting this case will be countered with that from agencies that have asserted that microplastics are not known to cause harm to human health. For example, this is the current information on the subject from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA):
The presence of environmentally derived microplastics and nanoplastics in food alone does not indicate a risk and does not violate FDA regulations unless it creates a health concern. While many studies have reported the presence of microplastics in several foods, including salt, seafood, sugar, beer, bottled water, honey, milk, and tea, current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that the levels of microplastics or nanoplastics detected in foods pose a risk to human health.
Additionally, because there are no standardized methods for how to detect, quantify, or characterize microplastics and nanoplastics, many of the scientific studies have used methods of variable, questionable, and/or limited accuracy and specificity.
The case is interesting because of how ubiquitous plastic bags for food storage and preparation are. I suspect the debate over microplastics and consumer safety will continue, despite existing evidence indicating that these particles pose no proven health risk.
Still, it’s difficult for the public to trust the science when so much research and regulatory guidance have proven inconsistent or untrustworthy over time.
Image by perplexity.ai.
This stupid woman is a threat to our food supply and way of life. I don’t suppose she’s old enough to know what life was before plastic bags, especially Ziplocs. Bah humbug!
Lest anyone forget, the ‘plastics concern du jour‘ around eighteen years ago was the ‘floating plastics patch the size of Texas in the Pacific ocean.’ Seems that after something that big could not be found at all by anyone, the narrative switched to the pile being made of microplastics which were impossible to spot via satellites or views out of airliner windows.
Memory inventoory contains only closeupimages of trash floating in water…going to google satellite images now…
“The “floating plastic island” in the Pacific refers to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), a massive accumulation of marine debris, primarily plastics, trapped by the North Pacific Gyre between Hawaii and California, but it’s not a solid island; it’s a dispersed soup of large items and microscopic plastics, making it mostly invisible from above, though incredibly dense in some areas, harming marine life”
I remember also – to make the story more true “they” expanded the category plastic to include all forms of flotsam. Images look real enough.
“Bakelite is the first fully synthetic plastic, a thermosetting resin invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907”
So plastic has been around for about 120 years and we’re finding out it can cause health problems just now? Oh. Next thing you know someone will complain cars crash sometimes, children drown in backyard swimming pools or mail carriers have slipped on brick staircases in winter.
Not sure if you meant it sarcastically or not, but for the sake of others:
“we’re finding out it can cause health problems just now?”
No, we’re finding out it the latest FAKE health problems to hit the media.
Considering how much of a BENEFIT plastics have been to the health and wealth of practically everyone for the past 200 years, the bags would have to be made of lead to be able to offset the benefit.
In case you’re looking for a SARC tag, there isn’t one. The Romans functioned for centuries with lead pipes and cups.
I wonder, did any Romans stand around the pantheon saying “I know its the pipes! It’s the pipes that’s doing it.”
I suspect most Romans never got anything out of a pipe. At least, the rural folks never did.
“oh, Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling…”
It’s mostly invisible if you’re in a boat too. It compares quite well to the asteroid belt. In movies spaceships precariously dodge thousands of huge rocks but in reality your odds of even spotting one are almost nil.
“Microplastics don’t come from bottles or bags. The vast majority are shed from everyday materials – synthetic clothing fibers, tire wear, and urban dust – not from visible
litter.”
https://www.voronoiapp.com/sustainability/The-Anatomy-of-Micro-Plastic-7011
No. The vast majority of microplastic comes from shoddy measuring methods:
https://medium.com/@axegggl/fact-checking-bioaccumulation-of-microplastics-in-decedent-human-brains-nature-medicine-2025-1650e349dc10
The vast majority also comes from third-world countries, who couldn’t give a shit less about environmental impact.
Hmm she could wrap her food in old newspapers, especially those which got printed with lead letters…just an idea 🤪
I actually earned a degree in Printing in the early 80s. University print shop had a linotype machine which used molten lead to cast lines of text. So lead fumes in the air. I’m still here, brain still functions.
I know you are being sarcastic.
Add to BenVincent, I worked for a newspaper while in highschool in 1950-1951. My job was in the lead room where I melted, cast, sawed, routed and swept lead every day after school. It must have not harmed me,I am now in good health at 92.
For those of you that don’t know about a linotype; it is a way to set type with melted lead. It has been called “the most complex maching ever built that worked”. It was invented in 1886 to replace hand seting of type. Over 200,000 were built and were used by most newspapers from the late 1880’s until the late 1950’s, If you look up how they work you will say: “naw, that could never work”. But they did and were entirely controlled mechanically with cams and levers, no electrical servos.
Jimmie
I recently read the new biography of Marc Twain who was a typesetter in his early days. Later in life he spent and lost a fortune trying to develop a better way (his hired tech people that is)- but didn’t succeed in it. He really wanted it and thought it would make him fabulously rich.
He still apparently died a millionaire, which actually meant something back then. Or so I read in a newspaper (dated April 25, 1910, 4 days after his passing) I found in the walls of my kitchen when I was renovating it.
He was an unhappy guy after burying his wife and 2 daughters.
Did you have to drink a lot of milk? I recall guys who worked in the body shop in a Ford plant here in Australia back when they used lead to wipe over panel joins on the roof to smooth them out prior to painting. They said they were required to drink a small bottle of milk at each meal break to help with potential side effects…
A hint to the stupid lady.
If you don’t like them.. DON’T USE THEM !!
Leave the rest of us to die in peace.!!
This is just another money grab by lawyers. Regular people will not be helped by this lawsuit in any way.
Yuh, wax paper. I never liked it.
Lawyers need to eat too.
Let them eat other lawyers!
90% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
99.9%
erm, 97% is the magic number dontchknow
Let them eat the whale dung off the ocean floor which is where most lawyers reside.
On a more serious note…the only thing I look at on a box of plastic bags is the size. Should a “warning label” suddenly appear on the label it would go totally unnoticed.
Recommended correction: “Should another warning label suddenly appear on the label it would go totally unnoticed.”
When there are enough stupid warning labels on thing (Don’t drink battery acid!) the rest are ignored as being for really, really stupid people who aren’t going to be reading any warning labels anyway.
“Contents may be hot!” Well, I sure effing hope so, that’s what I paid for.
“When there are enough stupid warning labels on thing (Don’t drink battery acid!)”
***************
Recall years ago when kids were eating Tide laundry pods? I wonder if there is a notice on the box now warning us not to eat them.
I say let natural selection take its course.
I have seen reports that many of the tests for alleged “microplastics” have a ridiculously high false positive rate, being unable to distinguish fats and plastics.
This looks like a predatort suit. Is the Church of Scientology involved?
Is the claim totally evidence-free?
I cannot tell. It could be as bad as glyphosate, i.e. one skanky report positive, scores negative of much higher
quality.
The core problem is the testers guessing what compounds are present based on what atoms are present – thus the confusion between fats and plastics.
(and alas it’s a destructive test)
Falsified (“laughable”) data was the rationale for one study’s retraction. ‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body | Plastics | The Guardian
This gem from the article:
“a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics.”
Reports of microplastic particles found in human tissue may not be accurate. More and better studies needed. If they aren’t present in human tissue, then all arguments about potential harm are rendered null and void. And if they are present, there’s still no evidence of harm yet, just theories remaining to be proven.
Agreeing with Halla – there’s a “Science Vs” podcast episode that explains also. The test that gives the most alarming results is standard, least expensive, most accessible and… very prone to inaccurate results.
It has been fifty years since my last formal
biology class, but bioaccumulation of any inert substance seems implausible. As mentioned, why not silica?
I pointed out to a person recently the ubiqitous contaminated in our food/water are silica compounds. Why hasn’t there been any talk of that
A lot of people do not get what is funny about Penn and Teller’s mock petition to ban DHMO (dihydrogenmonoxide).
Dihydrogenmonoxide is fatal if inhaled. Estimated deaths in the US per year is about 4,000.
You ever pulled up the SDS fo rit. Dangerous stuff. should be banned…..
😆😅🤣😂
Near my old abode in So Cal the city of Lake Forest came very close to a vote on banning DHMO. This was maybe 15 years ago. Fortunately, some aide had taken a chemistry class in high school and alerted the city council just days before the vote.
Fluorine.
More junk science, but being California the lawsuit might prevail.
I suppose microplastics are now ultra processed foods?
They haven’t been shown to be harmful.
Do ultra processed foods include bread and beer?
There is no working definition for UPFs. So they make it up.
I’m sure it includes some.
Wonder Bread comes to mind.
Or converting non fermentable sugars to fermentable sugars…
If it’s a raw vegetable, it has not been processed.
If it gets cooked, it’s processed.
If someone slices it up after cooking it, it’s ultra processed.
If it is packaged in plastic, it is ultra processed and “toxic.” 🙂
As this will turn out, its VERY LIKELY more bullsh*t –
See:
Our bodies may not be riddled with microplastics after all —
scientists say research is ‘not biologically plausible’ and ‘a joke’
https://nypost.com/2026/01/15/health/humans-may-not-be-riddled-with-microplastics-after-all-report/
Excerpt: But the Guardian found that at least seven widely cited studies were later challenged by other scientists. A separate review flagged 18 more for overlooking a major problem: human tissue itself can produce signals that mimic plastic, leading to possible false positives.
“The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” Dušan Materić, a German microplastics researcher who co-authored a letter challenging the study, told the Guardian.
“That paper is really bad, and it is very explainable why it is wrong,” he added. “Fat is known to make false positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.”
Seems easy enough to check – everybody eventually departs their “evidence”.
(Are corpses riddled with microplastics?)
(What constitutes “riddled with”?)
If the standards used for the “great Pacific garbage patch” are used. Then one micro-particle per person would be enough to qualify as “riddled”.
(I’m not joking, They are claiming one micro-particle per cubic meter for the GPGP. The average human body has less than 1 cubic meter of volume.)
“Riddled with” is another alarmist proclamation used to create fear to control populations.
Without plastic food storage the negative consequences would be unimaginable.
But one example; Stainless NSF surfaces replacing disposable processing coverings, a tiny tiny fraction of the input and operating costs of our food supply and yet everyone here sees the $$ just for this.
Don’t get me started on spoilage and food contamination.
Regarding evidence for harm:
Over the The Firebreak substack, David Zaruk has an excellent article summarizing a recent literature review by the European Food Safety Authority. “EFSA shows how most microplastic studies were deficient, unreliable and corrupted”.
From the EFSA review proper:
“Many publications are affected by methodological shortcomings in test conditions, in sample preparation, and by deficiencies in the reliability of analytical data, with the consequence of frequent misidentification and miscounting. … In view of all this, there is no sufficient basis at this stage to estimate MNP exposure from FCM during their uses.”
Link to The Firebreak article: https://www.thefirebreak.org/p/eu-food-science-authority-condemns
Link to EFSA lit review:https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2903/sp.efsa.2025.EN-9733
MNP = micro and nano plastics
FCM = food contact materials
If PE (polyethylene) were a naturally occurring substance, neither its toxicity (fake), nor resistance to decomposition (real) would be issues. Simply put, this is just another example of the Left, in cahoots with some useful idiots in the trial bar looking for a payoff, continuously supporting junk science in order to find weapons with which to overthrow ‘capitalism’.
Just another could/maybe//possibly cause harm alarmist trope the media picks up on to keep the populace in constant fear of life.
In the news…
Microplastic emissions are up to 10,000 times LOWER than we thought, promising study reveals
The growing threat of microplastics might be daunting, but a promising study now suggests that the situation might not be as dire as previously thought.
Researchers from the University of Vienna found that microplastic emissions are up to 10,000 times lower than previous studies have estimated.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15484461/Microplastic-emissions-lower-study-finds.html
The growing threat of microplastics might NOT be daunting? Or growing?
No, they are ONE TEN THOUSANDTH of what they thought.
[Number greater than one] “times” anything IS MORE, NOT LESS.
/rant
Nailed it.
I’m headed to the warehouse store this weekend. I’ll be sure and buy extra of the five pack zip lock packs. But I’ll quickly drive back out of the city after reading other new science that says city air pollution, noise, lights, heat, and microplastics are causing higher death rates from CVD and other diseases. We actually need more zip locks to store more food and limit trips to toxic cities.
When does the new govt microplastics agency open with graduates coming from microplastics departments at the university? Don’t forget the microplastics journals and research awards.
What about the UN working groups?
The funding is pending with the next Dems in the Whitehouse so there is plenty of organizing and meetings to get ready for that money surge.
Let’s hope there will not be another Democrat in the White House until the last coal of the climate bullshit has been extinguished.
Microplastic Justice.
I don’t use plastic bags for microwaving. They melt. They don’t release “microplastics.” They reform into big blobs.
You’re not, and never were, supposed to microwave stuff inside plastic bags; you were always supposed to take it out first! I transfer stuff into Pyrex containers for microwaving.
I suspect, Denis, that the bags are melted by the heat of the contents when they warm up. The bags aren’t designed to be heat-resistant!
Why stop with Ziploc plastic bags?
How long has the cellophane wrap been around?
Plastic IV bottles?
And don’t forget aluminum foil and wax paper! I’m sure they leave micro bits in food.
And anything used to store or supply water. (Water is called “The Universal Solvent” because it dissolves a little bit of just about everything it comes in contact with, even (shudder) CO2!)
Virtually everything in a hospital is plastic of one sort or another. IV bags, tubing, tape used to hold the IV in place (I think they even replace the metal needle with a plastic tube for longer term IVs), the cup your medicine comes in and the spoon they use to administer it, the plastic drink cup that comes with the medicine, bed liners, mattress covers, most of the bed itself, the wall coverings, the bedside table, the vinyl covered lounge chair, the plates, cups and service pieces that come with the meals. I could go on and on. Maybe your food at home is fine, it’s being in the hospital you have to worry about.
I wonder what the catheter did to my you know what.
Did you know that wind turbine blade shed microplastics from the front edge of their blades.
Perhaps this could be used to shut down the whole wind turbine scam.
Those are fiberglass. That is different. It’s the shards on the beach that cut feet and let the ocean microplastics into the blood system. 🙂
I understand that the fiberglass micro shards are similar to asbestos fibers. I wonder if they also cause mesothelioma.
Also a lot of resin and polymer dust etc.
Glass fibres aren’t released until they “glue” has all gone.
True, but:
Shards and fibers are different structures.
From Grok for what it’s worth.
The biggest source of ocean pollution these days is plastic waste, mostly from mismanaged trash on land that ends up in rivers and coasts.
Based on the most recent data from 2025, the top contributors are:
Other big ones include Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Pretty much all in Asia except Brazil.
the biggest destroyer of plastics…UV Light…Sunlight breaks down all plastics…join in a volunteer roadside trash pickup…see how many of the plastic grocery bags laying there are impossible to pick up…as they just break up into powder…floating in the ocean…they will be destroyed in a couple of weeks depending on the sun seasonal strength….bury the plastic in the county landfill and it will be there a 100 years from now…maybe 500…who knows…
There are newspapers in landfills that are still intact after a hundred-plus years.
This is almost as absurd as claiming that emissions of CO2 should be regulated under the Clean Air Act as though it were a harmful pollutant. Surely no one in government would fall for such a silly idea under legal pressure from misguided zealots, would they?!?! Oh wait.
I’ll go out on a limb here … I’m betting that processed foods (especially plasticized food from China), drugs, vitamins and modern vaccines are the real culprits.
‘Could be the only reason the planet allowed us to be spawned in the first place.. it wanted plastic for itself’..
I thought it was so we could free up all of that desperately needed CO2.
People like Linda Cheslow are a disgrace, don’t get me started on ambulance chasing lawyers.
Unfortunately, there have been a number of very expensive and harmful junk lawsuits that have prevailed. Examples include silicone breast implants, baby powder talcum, and glyphosate. They all have a common denominator: it is a statistical certainty that some people using them will develop cancer. And bleeding heart juries can ignore the fact that correlation is not causation.
What is different here is that there is no reliable evidence of any harm. At least cancer is a ‘harm’. The ‘brain microplastics’ paper is for sure a joke, and not only for the reason given in the comment. The blood brain barrier is so selective that special strategies are needed to deliver many (not all—ethanol, THC, SSRIs, and benzodiazepines being notable examples) useful CNS drugs—at the molecular level! Even ‘nanoplastics’ are much bigger than drug molecules.
From a purely legal perspective, no harm requires no warning—even in California.
I guess I am dead, died from cancer after all these decades of exposure to microplastics.
So who is typing this I wonder?
Plastics seem to keep people alive longer… eg Pelosi !!
Pelosi….
Humor – a difficult concept
— Lt. Saavik
Your ghost?
No, you died of trace industrial chemicals some 55 years ago, as per Nixon’s War on Cancer. If you weren’t born yet, paradoxes rule!
The concerning issue is how much plastics accumulate in the body/brain.
Simple common sense tells us that it can’t be good.
If you don’t believe this try putting sand or even talcum powder in your car’s engine.
At some point harm WILL occur. No one disagrees with that statement.
How is the human body so different that it defies the principle behind this?
Misapplied principle. Car engines do not metabolize. They only burn fuel plus air, relying on lubricants to smooth moving parts.
Sugar in fuel kills an engine via carmelization/carbonization. Super in food doesn’t because it metabolizes.
With respect to your first statement, (a) we do not know how much accumulates, and (b) common sense is very uncommon, as here. There is NO reliable evidence so far of any harm of any sort. Same evidentiary issue the climate alarmists have.
Lots of things get put into our body that don’t harm us. Especially things that weren’t harmful in the first place.
“No one disagrees with that statement.”
jon, this is the Internet.
_Everybody_ disagrees with you.
About _everything_.
Addressing the actual question:
I’ve eaten waaaay more than 100 gallons of ice cream in my life (1000? Not sure.) How much ice cream should I expect to find in my brain?
Shall we perform open brain surgery to take measurements?
/humor
In your case, simple common sense is paranoia driven by media alarmism.
The difference. A car engine is mechanical, mostly metal. The human body is biology, mostly chemical.