It depends on which Brita you own. A standard Brita pitcher is not certified to remove microplastics. It runs water through activated carbon and ion-exchange resin, which handle chlorine, taste, and some metals, but do not reliably strain out sub-micron plastic particles. The upgraded Brita Elite filter is certified for microplastics: WQA-certified to NSF/ANSI 401 — an independent lab standard for microplastics and other newer contaminants — reducing at least 85% of particles down to about half a micron (Brita's own testing reports 99.6%).
That certification stops at roughly 0.5 micron, so even the Elite misses the smallest nanoplastics. Want to go further? Boiling very hard water before you filter it, or installing a reverse osmosis system, beats any pitcher. Reverse osmosis is the only common household method that blocks nanoplastics too.
Brita sits on millions of kitchen counters, which makes it the natural place to start if you're worried about microplastics in your drinking water: can the pitcher you already own actually handle them? The answer hinges on which Brita you have and on what "filtering microplastics" really demands of a filter. Here's what the certifications and the peer-reviewed testing show.
Why microplastics are so hard to filter out of tap water
Microplastics are plastic fragments smaller than 5 millimeters, but the ones that survive in treated tap water sit at the tiny end of that range. Most are only a few microns across, and some shade down into nanoplastics below 1 micron. For scale, a human hair runs about 70 microns wide, so these particles are roughly a hundred times thinner than that. Municipal treatment strips out most microplastics through coagulation and sand filtration — clumping particles together so they sink, then straining the water through sand beds — yet the smallest particles slip through. That's why the water reaching your tap still carries them, and why point-of-use filtration is where the real reduction happens.
The contamination is well documented. A 2018 study in PLOS ONE by Kosuth, Mason, and Wattenberg found microplastics in 81% of tap water sampled worldwide, including U.S. tap water, which was the most contaminated of any region sampled. But a filter only helps if its physical barrier is tight enough to catch particles that small. This is where carbon pitchers and membrane filters part ways, and it's the whole reason a basic Brita and a Brita Elite give you very different water.
What "certified to remove microplastics" actually means
A specific standard sits behind that claim: NSF/ANSI 401. That's an independent testing standard covering "emerging and incidental contaminants" — the newer things showing up in tap water, like pharmaceutical residue, pesticides, and microplastics. A manufacturer can't self-declare it. An outside lab has to run the filter through the test and certify the result.
To earn the microplastics reduction claim, a filter has to reduce at least 85% of challenge particles in the 0.5-to-1-micron size range across its rated life. Two things matter there for a shopper. The 85% is a minimum floor, not a typical result, and it has to hold for the filter's whole rated life, not just when it's fresh out of the box — so a certified filter is one you can trust in month three, not only on day one. The Brita Elite is WQA-certified to that standard, and Brita's published data lands well above the 85% floor inside the certified range.
So the certification is real and worth paying attention to. It also has a hard edge. The test floor is about half a micron. Anything smaller, including the nanoplastics turning up more and more in bottled and tap water, falls below what NSF/ANSI 401 even measures — an uncertified filter and a certified one are equally unproven down there. A certified pitcher is a genuine upgrade over a basic one. If nanoplastics are the thing keeping you up at night, you'll want to look past pitchers entirely.
What a standard Brita filter removes (and what it misses)
The classic Brita pitcher filter combines activated carbon with ion-exchange resin — a porous carbon bed that chemically grabs onto contaminants, plus a resin that swaps unwanted metal ions for harmless ones. Activated carbon is very good at adsorbing chlorine, taste, odor, and some dissolved metals, which is what it's certified for under NSF/ANSI 42 and 53 (the taste-and-odor and health-contaminant standards, neither of which tests for microplastics). Adsorption is a chemical process, though, not a fine physical sieve. It pulls certain molecules out of the water but does not reliably strain out sub-micron solids like plastic fragments.
The clearest evidence comes from a 2023 University of Toronto study in Polymers. Researchers ran pour-through filters against plastic fragments and fibers. Devices built around a physical microfiltration membrane — a thin sheet punched with pores far too small for a plastic fragment to pass through, so particles are physically strained out rather than chemically absorbed — removed 78 to 100% of microplastics. That's a wide range because performance varies by device and particle type, but even the bottom of it means most of the plastic in your glass is gone. A device relying only on granular activated carbon and ion exchange did the opposite: it put more particles into the filtered water than the tap water started with, most likely because the carbon bed shed material of its own.
Brita's own product line reflects this split. The basic pitcher makes no microplastics claim at all. The Brita Elite filter uses a denser carbon block and carries a separate certification aimed specifically at microplastics. It's a different product, not the same filter with better packaging, so checking the box for "Elite" is the difference that actually counts.
Best water filters for microplastics: Brita Elite vs. Clearly Filtered vs. reverse osmosis
If a basic pitcher won't cut it, these are the three tiers worth knowing, from an affordable certified pitcher up to full reverse osmosis (a system plumbed under your sink that forces water through an ultra-fine membrane). The table below compares them on the number that matters most, how small a particle each one actually stops, plus the day-to-day tradeoffs in price, install effort, and what else they pull out of your water. One note on reading it: a smaller micron number means a tighter filter, so lower is better.
| Brita Elite (pitcher) | Clearly Filtered (pitcher) | iSpring RCC7 (reverse osmosis) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it filters | Dense carbon block + ion exchange | Multi-stage proprietary "Affinity" media | Semipermeable RO membrane (~0.0001 µm pores — pressure pushes water through openings so tiny that almost nothing else fits) |
| Microplastics | Certified to NSF/ANSI 401 (≥85%, to ~0.5 µm) | Independently lab-tested to NSF/ANSI 401 among 365+ contaminants | Near-complete rejection in membrane reviews |
| Nanoplastics (<0.5 µm) | Not covered by certification | Not specifically certified | Yes. Pores exclude particles below 100 nm |
| Also removes | Lead, chlorine, some metals (NSF 42/53) | PFAS, lead, fluoride, many more (per company testing) | Dissolved salts, PFAS, most everything |
| Format & effort | Countertop pitcher, no install | Countertop pitcher, no install | Under-sink, plumbing install, wastes some water |
| Best for | Entry point | Step up | Maximum removal |
| Shop | Brita Elite Filter → | Clearly Filtered Pitcher → | iSpring RCC7 RO System → |
Want the cheapest real improvement over a basic pitcher? The Brita Elite is the entry point, and the most affordable filter that actually carries a microplastics certification. The Clearly Filtered pitcher is the step up if you also want documented PFAS and heavy-metal reduction without leaving the pitcher format. And for the most complete removal, including nanoplastics and dissolved contaminants, a reverse osmosis system like the iSpring RCC7 is as far as household treatment goes.
How to remove microplastics from water for free: boil, then filter
Before you spend a dollar, there's a nearly free trick that works surprisingly well on hard water. A 2024 study in Environmental Science & Technology Letters found that boiling very hard tap water — around 300 mg/L of calcium carbonate — removed up to about 90% of nano- and microplastics (moderately hard water, around 180 mg/L, saw roughly 84%). Here's the mechanism: as the water heats, calcium carbonate crystallizes and traps plastic particles inside it. Calcium carbonate is limescale — the chalky white crust that builds up inside your kettle or on your faucet. Hard water is simply water carrying a lot of it. Pour the cooled water through a basic filter or fine strainer to catch that mineral crust, and the trapped plastics leave with it.
The catch is that the effect tracks with hardness. Soft water, low in minerals (under about 60 mg/L), saw only around 25% removal — there simply isn't enough limescale forming to carry the plastics out. If you're not sure which you have, mineral spots on your glassware and crust in the kettle mean hard water, and your municipal water report lists the number outright. So boiling won't replace a good filter, but as a first line of defense it's real, research-backed, and free. That makes it especially worth doing across much of the Great Lakes region, where tap water tends to run mineral-rich. Boil first, filter second, and you've knocked down your microplastics intake before you've bought anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a regular Brita pitcher remove microplastics?
Not reliably. The standard Brita pitcher uses activated carbon and ion-exchange resin and carries no microplastics certification. In a 2023 University of Toronto study in Polymers, a point-of-use device using only granular activated carbon and ion exchange actually released more particles into its filtered water than were present in the tap water, while devices with a physical microfiltration membrane removed 78 to 100% of microplastic fragments. (Cherian et al., 2023, Polymers)
Is the Brita Elite filter certified to remove microplastics?
Yes. The Brita Elite is WQA-certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 401, which requires reducing at least 85% of test particles in the 0.5-to-1-micron range for the life of the filter. That covers microplastics down to about half a micron, but it does not extend to the smallest nanoplastics below that size. (NSF/ANSI 401 reduction protocol, WC&P, 2022)
What is the best water filter for microplastics?
Reverse osmosis removes the widest range. Its membrane pores are roughly 0.0001 microns, small enough to exclude both microplastics and nanoplastics, and peer-reviewed membrane reviews report near-complete microplastic rejection for reverse osmosis and nanofiltration. Among pitchers, a filter that is certified or independently lab-tested to NSF/ANSI 401, such as the Brita Elite or Clearly Filtered, is the practical pick. (Membrane technologies review, Water Science & Technology, 2023)
Does boiling water remove microplastics?
In hard water, largely yes. A 2024 study in Environmental Science & Technology Letters found that boiling very hard tap water (around 300 mg/L of calcium carbonate) removed up to about 90% of nano- and microplastics as the particles became trapped in limescale, which you then filter out. In soft water the effect was closer to 25%, so boiling works best as a cheap first step paired with a filter. (Yu et al., 2024, Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett.)
Sources & further reading
- Cherian, A. G., Liu, Z., McKie, M. J., Almuhtaram, H., & Andrews, R. C. (2023). Microplastic Removal from Drinking Water Using Point-of-Use Devices. Polymers, 15(6), 1331. mdpi.com
- Yu, Z., Wang, J.-J., Liu, L.-Y., Li, Z., & Zeng, E. Y. (2024). Drinking Boiled Tap Water Reduces Human Intake of Nanoplastics and Microplastics. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 11(3), 273–279. pubs.acs.org
- Water Conditioning & Purification International (2022). Update on Microplastics Reduction Claims (NSF/ANSI 401). wcponline.com
- A review of microplastic removal from water and wastewater by membrane technologies (2023). Water Science & Technology, 88(1), 199–219. iwaponline.com
- Kosuth, M., Mason, S. A., & Wattenberg, E. H. (2018). Anthropogenic contamination of tap water, beer, and sea salt. PLOS ONE, 13(4), e0194970. plos.org
For educational purposes only — not medical advice. MicroClarity reports peer-reviewed research; it does not diagnose or treat.