We sell a glass spinner, so you'd expect us to say yes and wave our arms. Instead, here's what the research actually supports, what it doesn't, and how to think about it.
Honesty corner, because our credibility is worth more than a scare headline: there is no established safe or unsafe threshold for ingested microplastics, and no study directly ties salad spinners specifically to measurable health outcomes. The World Health Organization's position is that evidence of harm at current exposure levels is limited and more research is needed. If someone tells you a plastic spinner is definitely hurting you, they're ahead of the science. If someone tells you it's definitely fine, so are they.
Treat it like any cheap insurance decision. You can't control microplastics in tap water or sea salt. You can completely control what your washed food sits in, for the cost of buying a glass or steel tool once instead of a plastic one every few years. Swap the surfaces with the most contact time and the most abrasion first:
| 1. Cutting boards | Highest abrasion of anything in the kitchen. Wood is the classic inert choice. |
|---|---|
| 2. Storage containers | Longest food-contact time, often with heat and acid. Glass containers are the standard swap. |
| 3. Prep bowls and spinners | Wet food, agitation, and basket friction. A glass-bowl spinner removes the plastic from the surface your greens soak and spin against - and doubles as the storage container in step 2. |
| Lower priority | Rigid plastic that food touches briefly and gently (measuring cups, funnels) sheds comparatively little. |
The Jarelli Glass Salad Spinner puts your greens in a borosilicate glass bowl that cannot shed plastic no matter how scratched, old, or dishwashed it gets. The basket and lids still contain BPA-free plastic, and we say so on every page, because a spinning mechanism without engineered parts doesn't exist. The claim is minimal plastic where it matters most, not zero plastic. If your budget says keep the plastic spinner you own, do that and replace it when it clouds; if you're upgrading anyway, upgrade to a bowl that can't wear into your food.
BPA-free addresses one chemical, not particle shedding. A BPA-free bowl scratches and wears like any other plastic. It's a worthwhile property (Jarelli's own plastic components are BPA-free), but it is not the same claim as microplastic-free.
Perfect isn't on the menu; less is. Rinsing produce reduces surface contaminants of all kinds, and choosing inert prep surfaces removes one controllable source. That's the whole, unglamorous logic.
Yes. Borosilicate glass doesn't leach, react with acids, absorb odors, or shed particles under normal kitchen use. It's why labs use it. Its one real risk is the obvious one: drop it on tile and it can break.
Next: our honest ranking of glass and plastic-minimal spinners →