How to Remove Microplastics from Drinking Water (UK Guide)

If you have read our article on microplastics in UK tap water, you know the situation: anthropogenic particles were found in most tap water samples in the largest survey published — 81% of 159 samples sourced worldwide, averaging 5.45 particles per litre — though at levels far below bottled water, and with no reliable UK-specific count in the peer-reviewed literature. The natural next question is: what can you actually do about it?

Quite a lot, it turns out — but the popular answers are not the effective ones. The jug filter most households already own is close to useless for this job, while the cheapest method of all (boiling, in a hard water area) is one of the best-supported by evidence. This guide ranks every practical method by what published research actually shows.

The Quick Answer

Method	What the evidence shows	Relative cost	Effort
Boiling + straining	~90% removal in very hard water, ~25% in soft water	Pennies per litre	Medium
Jug filter (carbon + ion exchange only)	Unreliable — one study found particles added to water	Budget	Low
Jug or bottle filter with membrane	78–100% of plastic fragments in lab testing	Budget	Low
On-tap / under-sink microfiltration	Physical barrier down to 0.5–1 μm (certified options exist)	Mid	Low
Reverse osmosis	Near-complete, including nanoplastics	Premium	Low once fitted
Distillation	Effectively complete in principle; little consumer test data	Mid	High
Glass or steel drinking vessel	Removes a source, not the water — but the biggest controllable one	Budget (one-off)	None

In one sentence: boil and strain if you live in a hard water area and want a free option; buy a filter with a genuine membrane (not just carbon granules) if you want convenience; go reverse osmosis if you want nanoplastics gone too — and drink the result from glass or stainless steel either way.

Method 1: Boiling and Straining — the Free Option

A 2024 study by researchers at Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University, published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, tested something remarkably simple: boil tap water for five minutes, let it cool, and pour it through a basic filter such as a coffee filter.

The results, for polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene particles ranging from 0.1 to 150 micrometres (spanning the nanoplastic and microplastic range):

• Very hard water (300 mg/L calcium carbonate): around 90% of particles removed
• Hard water (above 120 mg/L): at least 80% removed
• Soft water (below 60 mg/L): roughly 25% removed

The mechanism is the limescale in your kettle. As water boils, dissolved calcium carbonate crystallises, and the crystals form around plastic particles — including nanoplastics — encapsulating them. Straining the cooled water removes the limescale and the trapped plastic with it.

Doing it properly

1. Boil the water for five minutes — a rolling boil, not just clicking the kettle off
2. Let it cool
3. Pour it through a coffee filter, fine mesh strainer, or clean muslin into a glass or stainless steel jug
4. Refrigerate and use as drinking water

The caveats

• Your water hardness decides everything. Most of southern and eastern England has hard water, which is exactly where the method works. Scotland, Wales, and north-west England are largely soft water areas, where removal falls to around a quarter. Your water company’s website will tell you your hardness in mg/L.
• You must strain after boiling. Boiling alone rearranges the problem; the strainer is what removes it.
• Boil in metal or glass, not plastic. Research published in Nature Food found polypropylene feeding bottles released up to 16 million microplastic particles per litre when exposed to hot water — plastic kettles are made of similar polymers, so a plastic kettle risks adding particles while you try to remove them. Use a stainless steel or glass kettle.
• It is a batch process. Boiling, cooling, and straining is not practical for a quick glass of water; treat it like making a jug of filtered water for the fridge.

A published scientific comment on the study noted these same limitations — particularly that effectiveness varies sharply with water hardness — and called for replication with other water types. The boiling method is well-evidenced but young; treat it as one tool, not a complete solution.

Method 2: Water Filter Jugs — Read This Before Buying

Here is the uncomfortable finding. A 2023 University of Toronto study published in Polymers tested pour-through jug filters against water spiked with PET and PVC fragments and nylon fibres, and found that the technology inside a standard jug cartridge — loose granular activated carbon plus ion-exchange resin — is not a microplastic removal technology at all:

• The carbon-and-resin-only device at some points released more plastic fragments into the water than it removed
• The two devices that included a membrane microfiltration stage removed 78–86% of PVC fragments and 94–100% of PET fragments
• The only thing the basic jug caught reliably was long fibres, which are large enough for almost any mesh to stop

Activated carbon works by adsorption — chemistry, not straining — and does nothing to solid plastic particles smaller than the gaps between its granules. This is why the standard UK supermarket jug cartridge makes no microplastic claim: we break down exactly what Brita does and does not claim in our article Does Brita filter microplastics?

What to buy instead: a jug or filter with a genuine membrane stage and a stated pore size, or one certified for microplastics reduction under NSF/ANSI 401 — a certification that requires at least 85% removal of 0.5–1 μm particles under laboratory test conditions. Our water filter buying guide lists UK-available options.

Method 3: On-Tap and Under-Sink Filters

The middle of the market is where certification starts meaning something:

• NSF/ANSI 53 cyst reduction is the most useful existing standard for this purpose: it independently verifies that a filter removes particles down to 1 micrometre (the size of Cryptosporidium cysts). A filter with this certification will, by the same mechanism, remove the vast majority of microplastics measured in tap water.
• Microfiltration membranes on tap-mounted systems go finer. Brita’s own mypure SLIM V-MF, for example, claims to stop “99.999% of bacteria and the finest micro-particles >0,5 µm” — a genuine 0.5 micrometre physical barrier, unlike the jug cartridges.
• Carbon block (compressed carbon with a uniform sub-micron pore structure) is a different beast from loose granular carbon and can carry NSF 53 certification.

Expect to pay more for the hardware than any jug costs, plus annual refills — but still a fraction of a reverse osmosis system. This tier removes essentially all measured microplastics without plumbing work or the water waste of reverse osmosis — the sweet spot for most households. Specific products are compared in our full filter guide.

Method 4: Reverse Osmosis — Maximum Removal

Reverse osmosis (RO) forces water through a semi-permeable membrane with pores small enough to reject dissolved salts, let alone plastic particles. A 2023 review of membrane technologies for microplastic removal in Water Science & Technology found membrane processes consistently deliver the highest removal rates of any treatment class, frequently approaching complete removal — and RO is the finest membrane of all, reaching well into the nanoplastic range.

One honest caveat, though it comes from wastewater rather than drinking water: an Australian study of full-scale municipal treatment found an average of 0.28 microplastic particles per litre still present in tertiary-treated effluent — the most advanced stage it measured — against 0.48 in secondary and 1.54 in primary. That study did not test a reverse osmosis stage, and treated effluent is not drinking water, so it says nothing about RO specifically. What it does show is the general shape of the thing: each additional filtration stage cuts particle counts sharply, and none of them reaches zero. The case for RO rests on pore size — its membrane openings are orders of magnitude smaller than any plastic particle — not on this study. Membranes still have seals, housings, and wear; “near-complete” is the accurate claim, not “absolute”.

The trade-offs:

• Cost: the most expensive tier here by a wide margin — an installed under-sink system costs several times an on-tap microfiltration unit, and costs more per year in membrane and filter replacements on top
• Water waste: typically 1 litre of drinking water per 3–4 litres input, though newer systems reach 1:1
• Mineral removal: RO strips calcium and magnesium along with everything else; some systems add a remineralisation stage
• Installation: under-sink plumbing and usually a dedicated tap

If you want the closest thing to plastic-free water available at home — including nanoplastics — this is it.

Method 5: Distillation

Distillation boils water into steam and condenses it in a separate chamber. Plastic particles are not volatile — they cannot evaporate with the steam — so they stay behind in the boiling chamber. Laboratory research supports the principle: a 2023 study in Desalination found membrane distillation removed 99% or more of microplastics from seawater in lab-scale testing.

The honest caveat is that no peer-reviewed testing of countertop consumer distillers for microplastic removal has been published, and small units with plastic lids or internal parts could reintroduce particles. If you go this route, choose a unit with a stainless steel chamber and glass collection bottle.

Practically, distillation is a niche choice: a countertop unit costs roughly what a decent on-tap filter does, takes several hours to produce a few litres, uses more electricity than any other method here, and produces flat-tasting demineralised water. It suits people who already distil for other reasons more than it suits someone starting from scratch.

What About Letting Water Stand?

Some guides suggest leaving tap water to stand so particles settle out. The physics only half-works: denser polymers (PET, PVC) sink slowly, but polyethylene and polypropylene float, and nanoplastics never settle at all — they are kept suspended by Brownian motion. No study has quantified removal in a domestic jug setting. Treat settling as a marginal supplement, not a method.

How to Remove Nanoplastics from Water

Nanoplastics — particles smaller than 1 micrometre — deserve their own answer, because most advice about microplastics quietly ignores them.

They are almost certainly the most numerous plastic particles in water. A 2024 study in PNAS using new single-particle imaging found approximately 240,000 plastic particles per litre in bottled water, around 90% of them nanoplastics — particles earlier studies simply could not count. Standard tap water surveys undercount them for the same reason.

What actually works at this scale:

1. Reverse osmosis — the membrane rejects particles orders of magnitude smaller than any nanoplastic. The strongest home option.
2. Boiling + straining (hard water) — the 2024 boiling study explicitly included nanoplastics down to 0.1 μm, and removal works by limescale encapsulation rather than straining, so particle size matters less than you would expect.
3. NSF/ANSI 401-certified microplastic filters — verified against 0.5–1 μm particles, the boundary of the nano range.

What does not work: jug meshes, granular carbon, letting water stand — every method that relies on catching particles in visible-scale gaps.

Just as important is not adding nanoplastics back after you have removed them: bottled water is the single largest avoidable source, and hot water in plastic vessels (kettles, bottles) accelerates shedding. Boil in steel, store in glass.

The UK Context

Two pieces of regulatory context worth knowing:

• The Drinking Water Inspectorate, which regulates water quality in England and Wales, does not include microplastics in its mandatory testing parameters as of 2026. Water companies test for over 40 substances; microplastics are not among them, and monitoring remains voluntary.
• The World Health Organisation’s 2019 report on microplastics in drinking-water concluded that, on the limited information available, microplastics in drinking water do not appear to pose a health risk at current levels — while explicitly calling for better data, particularly on particles in the nano size range, where it described the available evidence as extremely limited.

That is genuinely reassuring context, not a reason to do nothing: UK tap water is among the better options worldwide, and the methods above are about reducing an exposure that regulators are still learning to measure. For the full research picture, see our article on microplastics in UK tap water.

Recommendations by Priority

Spending nothing: if you are in a hard water area (most of southern and eastern England), boil for five minutes and strain — up to 90% removal for the cost of the energy. In a soft water area, skip it; the chemistry is not on your side.

The cheapest meaningful change: put the money into the vessel, not the filter. Drinking tap water from a stainless steel bottle or glass bottle instead of plastic eliminates the largest controllable source of particles in your drinking water — see the bottled vs tap comparison for why this matters more than any filter.

The value tier: a filter with a genuine membrane — an on-tap microfiltration system (0.5 μm class) or an NSF 53-certified carbon block. This tier removes essentially all measured microplastics. Avoid spending this money on a carbon-and-resin jug cartridge for this purpose; the independent evidence is against it.

Maximum removal: under-sink reverse osmosis, ideally with remineralisation. The only tier that convincingly addresses nanoplastics.

Whatever tier you choose, our water filter guide has specific UK-available products for each, and our room-by-room home guide covers reducing exposure beyond the tap.

Sources

1. Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics — Yu et al., Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2024
2. Comment on “Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics” — Hale & Albert, Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2024
3. Microplastic Removal from Drinking Water Using Point-of-Use Devices — Cherian et al., Polymers, 2023
4. A review of microplastic removal from water and wastewater by membrane technologies — Water Science & Technology, 2023
5. Wastewater treatment plants as a pathway for microplastics: Development of a new approach to sample wastewater-based microplastics — Ziajahromi et al., Water Research, 2017 (microplastics remaining in primary, secondary and tertiary treated effluent)
6. Behavior and removal of microplastics during desalination in a lab-scale direct contact membrane distillation system — Desalination, 2023
7. Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy — Qian et al., PNAS, 2024
8. Microplastic release from the degradation of polypropylene feeding bottles during infant formula preparation — Nature Food, 2020
9. Performance Data Sheet for Brita System with Brita Elite Filter — Brita (NSF/ANSI 401 microplastics reduction requirement)
10. Microplastics in drinking-water — World Health Organization, 2019
11. Drinking Water Inspectorate — water quality regulation in England and Wales
12. Anthropogenic contamination of tap water, beer, and sea salt — Kosuth et al., PLOS ONE, 2018 (159 globally sourced tap water samples; global figures, not UK-specific)

This article is based on published research and publicly available information from UK regulatory bodies. It does not constitute health advice.