Ziploc Lawsuit Update: What the Microplastics Class Action Claimed and How It Ended

The Ziploc lawsuit, Cheslow v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., was a proposed class action filed April 25, 2025 in federal court in San Francisco. It claimed Ziploc bags and containers labeled "Microwave Safe" and "Freezer" release microplastics into food when heated or frozen. The case was voluntarily dismissed on August 20, 2025, with no ruling on the claims, no settlement, and no claim form. Many people search for it as the Ziplock lawsuit or the zip lock bag lawsuit; it is the same case.^1,2

Case status checked October 22, 2026.

This article covers what the complaint claimed, what the studies it cited tested, what the research on plastic in the body shows so far, and practical ways to reduce plastic contact in the kitchen.

Key takeaways

• S.C. Johnson filed a motion to dismiss on July 1, 2025. The case ended on August 20, 2025 by voluntary dismissal, entered as a court order, before the motion was heard. The plaintiff's own claims were dismissed with prejudice.^1,2,3
• There is no Ziploc settlement, claim form, or payout. Any site offering to file a Ziploc claim is not connected to this case.¹
• None of the studies cited in the complaint tested a Ziploc product. The main one used unnamed polypropylene containers and polyethylene pouches with water and diluted vinegar in place of food.^4,5
• A parallel case over Rubbermaid TakeAlongs containers, filed by the same law firm, was still pending as of the last docket entry I could confirm, with a motion to dismiss set for hearing December 11, 2025.⁸
• Research linking microplastics to harm in people is early and observational. The strongest human study found polyethylene inside artery plaque in 58% of patients tested, and worse outcomes in that group.⁶

This article is for education only. It is not legal advice and not medical advice. The author is a clinical herbalist, not a physician or attorney. Nothing here diagnoses, treats, or prevents any condition, and nothing here states or implies that any named product is toxic or unsafe. Court records and published studies are cited so you can read them yourself. Questions about your own health belong with your physician.

What did the Ziploc class action lawsuit claim?

Evidence: documented. Taken directly from the 51-page complaint filed with the court.

Linda Cheslow of Santa Rosa, California bought gallon and quart Ziploc freezer bags at Costco in 2024. Her complaint, filed by Clarkson Law Firm of Malibu, said she relied on the "Microwave Safe" and "Freezer" labels and would not have bought the bags, or would have paid less, had the box warned that the plastic sheds particles when heated or frozen.⁴

The complaint named eight product lines: pint, quart and gallon freezer bags, quart and gallon slider freezer bags, quart and gallon slider storage bags, and Ziploc containers. It argued that polyethylene and polypropylene release microplastics under heat and cold, that S.C. Johnson knew this, and that leaving it off the label broke California's Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law, and Consumers Legal Remedies Act. It asked for a nationwide class, refunds of the price premium, punitive damages, and an order forcing new warning labels or a halt to sales.⁴

The science section of the complaint ran five pages. Its headline number came from a 2023 University of Nebraska study: some containers released up to 4.22 million microplastic particles and 2.11 billion nanoplastic particles from one square centimeter of plastic after three minutes in a microwave.^4,5 That study is covered in detail below.

How did the Ziploc lawsuit end?

Evidence: documented. Taken from the federal court docket, legal reporting on the dismissal order, and the company's public statement.

S.C. Johnson filed a motion to dismiss on July 1, 2025, and the court set a hearing for October 15. On August 20 the docket shows the case terminated. The dismissal was voluntary, meaning it came from the plaintiff's side rather than from a ruling, and the judge, William H. Orrick, entered it as an order. Cheslow's own claims were dismissed with prejudice, which bars her from refiling them. The motion to dismiss was never argued or decided.^1,2,3

Several legal news sites reported that the court "trashed" or "dismissed" the suit. The record shows a voluntary dismissal. The court made no finding on whether Ziploc bags shed microplastics, whether the label misleads, or whether the cited studies were sound, so all three questions remain open.^1,3,9

S.C. Johnson's spokesperson told the Southern California Record that "no data was presented in the lawsuit that demonstrates Ziploc sheds any microplastic," and that the company stands behind the safety of its products. The same statement acknowledged that microplastics have become widespread in air, food and water from many sources.⁹

A related class action application in Quebec, filed May 26, 2025, was withdrawn as well. The law firm that filed it wrote on its own website that the plaintiff acknowledged her supporting documents did not substantiate the allegations, and that the Quebec Superior Court authorized the withdrawal on September 29, 2025.⁷

The Rubbermaid case is the one still moving as far as I could confirm. Clarkson Law Firm filed a near-identical complaint on April 28, 2025 over TakeAlongs containers labeled "Microwave Safe," "Microwave Reheatable" and "Freezer Safe." The plaintiffs later dropped Newell Brands as the defendant and named its subsidiary Rubbermaid Incorporated instead. Rubbermaid moved to dismiss the second amended complaint on September 29, 2025, with a hearing set for December 11, 2025 before Judge Hernan D. Vera in Los Angeles. The docket I could access ends in October 2025, so the outcome of that motion is unconfirmed here.⁸

What are Ziploc bags made of, and who owns Ziploc?

Evidence: documented. From the complaint and the company's own product pages as quoted in it.

Ziploc is owned by S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., a Wisconsin corporation based in Racine that has held the brand since 1998. The bags and containers are made from polyethylene and polypropylene, the two most common food-contact plastics in any kitchen.⁴ Ziploc's own instructions for microwavable bags say to vent one side about an inch before heating, warn that the bag and its contents may be hot, and caution against overheating because the bag can melt.⁴ Those instructions became part of the lawsuit's argument: a company that tells you to vent the bag expects you to heat it, so the label should also say what heat does to the plastic.

Do Ziploc bags release microplastics? What the cited studies tested

Evidence: moderate. Laboratory studies with food simulants, none of which tested a Ziploc product or a freezer condition.

The complaint leaned on one paper more than any other. Hussain and colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln published it in Environmental Science & Technology in June 2023, with federal research funding. They tested polypropylene food containers and polyethylene reusable food pouches under three conditions: microwaving, refrigeration, and room-temperature storage. Freezing was not one of them. In place of food they used deionized water and 3% acetic acid, a standard stand-in for acidic foods. Microwave heating released the most particles of the three. Some containers released up to 4.22 million microplastic and 2.11 billion nanoplastic particles per square centimeter after three minutes. Refrigeration or room-temperature storage for more than six months also released millions to billions of particles. The polyethylene pouch shed more than the polypropylene containers did.⁵

Most news coverage skipped the limits of that paper. It does not name Ziploc or any other brand. It used water and diluted vinegar rather than food, and release into fat, protein or starch can differ. Its toxicity test exposed human embryonic kidney cells in a dish to extracted particles at 1,000 micrograms per milliliter, a concentration chosen to find an effect rather than to mirror what reaches a person's bloodstream from a reheated meal. At that dose about 77% of the cells died after two days.⁵

The freezing claim had no direct measurement behind it. The complaint cited a study of chilled carbonated beverage bottles and another of infant feeding bottles and breast milk storage bags, then reasoned that cold makes plastic brittle and freezer bags should therefore shed too.⁴ The argument is plausible, but no cited study froze a food storage bag and counted what came off it, and none froze a container and then microwaved it. So the comparison the research supports is heat against refrigeration and room temperature. Where freezing sits on that scale has not been measured.

The remaining citations were about microplastics in the body generally: a 2024 study finding plastic in human bone marrow, a 2025 Nature Medicine paper measuring plastic in cadaver brains, and a review on gut effects.^4,10 Those papers say nothing about Ziploc either. They were there to argue that the omission mattered to shoppers, which is the legal test for a label claim.

S.C. Johnson's position, that the suit presented no data showing Ziploc itself sheds microplastics, matches the complaint's own footnotes. Whether a Ziploc bag behaves like the unnamed polyethylene pouch in the Nebraska study is a fair question that the lawsuit never got far enough to answer.

Microplastics in the body: heart, brain and dementia research

Evidence: early. One prospective human study, autopsy surveys, and animal and cell work.

The strongest human evidence is a 2024 study in The New England Journal of Medicine. Marfella and colleagues followed 257 patients who had plaque surgically removed from a carotid artery. Polyethylene was found inside the plaque of 150 of them, about 58%, and polyvinyl chloride in 31. Over roughly 34 months of follow-up, patients with plastic in their plaque had a higher rate of heart attack, stroke or death from any cause, with a hazard ratio of 4.53.⁶

That is an association in people who already had artery disease. The study does not establish that plastic caused the events, and the authors say so. What it establishes is that polyethylene, the same material used in freezer bags, ends up lodged in human tissue, and that the patients carrying it had worse outcomes over the follow-up period.⁶

The brain research is where searches for "Ziploc bags and dementia" come from. In February 2025 Nihart and colleagues at the University of New Mexico reported in Nature Medicine that they had confirmed micro- and nanoplastics, mostly polyethylene, in human liver, kidney and brain tissue from autopsies. Brain tissue carried a higher share of polyethylene than liver or kidney, mostly as nanoscale shard-like fragments. Concentrations rose between 2016 and 2024 samples. Brains from people with a documented dementia diagnosis showed more accumulation, with particles found in blood vessel walls and immune cells.¹⁰ The authors state that exposure routes, uptake, clearance and health consequences remain unknown. A brain affected by dementia may also clear particles less well, so the finding does not show that plastic causes dementia, and nothing in the study traced the plastic to any product.

Beyond those two papers, most of what researchers describe comes from animal and cell experiments: inflammation, oxidative stress, changes to gut bacteria, and endocrine effects at doses that are hard to compare with real-world exposure.^4,5 The field is young and the measurement methods are still debated. Two points are not in dispute: the particles are present in human tissue, and in the laboratory work that exists, microwaving released more of them from polyethylene and polypropylene than refrigeration or room-temperature storage did.^5,6,10

If you filter your drinking water for other reasons, that same step removes some particle load; see the water filter guide for what each filter type catches. Plastic exposure from products that touch the body is covered in the safe menstrual products article.

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Reducing plastic contact in the kitchen

Evidence: practical and precautionary. The laboratory work compared heat with refrigeration and room temperature and included an acidic food simulant; it did not test freezing, and no study has followed people who use these products daily for years.

The lawsuit did not settle whether Ziploc bags are a problem, and the laboratory work settles less than the headlines suggested. What it does show is a pattern: in the Nebraska tests, microwaving released more particles from polyethylene and polypropylene than refrigeration or room-temperature storage of the same containers, months of cold or room-temperature storage still released a measurable amount, and the acidic simulant was part of every test condition.⁵ Freezing was never measured.

My own position is simpler than the research. No one has studied what decades of daily contact with these plastics does to a person, and until someone does, I would rather not be the test case. The particles are in artery plaque and brain tissue already.^6,10 Whether they are doing anything there is unknown, which is a reason to limit exposure, not a reason to wait. Plastic has a place in healthcare, where a sterile single-use item can be the safer option. I do not think it has a place touching food. I am strictest about the situations the laboratory work and the complaint both point to: long storage, heat, cold, and acidic foods or drinks.

The recycling argument does not change that math. The EPA's own figures put the U.S. plastics recycling rate at 8.7% for 2018: 35.7 million tons generated, 3.1 million recycled, the rest burned or landfilled.¹² So roughly nine out of ten plastic items end up as waste, and the ones that stay in use shed particles into water systems along the way, with consequences for health and the environment that no one has measured. Avoiding plastic entirely is not realistic when most products ship wrapped in it. Doing your best, and staying in the control group for novel conveniences wherever you can, is the standard I work to, starting with anything that goes in or on the body.

Glass first

Glass does not shed polymer particles and does not react with acid, which makes it the default for anything that will sit for more than a day, anything hot, anything going in the freezer, and anything acidic like tomato sauce, citrus, kombucha, vinegar-based dressings or fermented vegetables. Wide-mouth, straight-sided jars freeze well with an inch of headspace. Glass with a glass lid and a silicone or rubber gasket also keeps the plastic-on-plastic friction of zipper tracks and snap lids away from the food.

Stainless steel, with one caveat

Stainless steel is the second choice: lighter, unbreakable, and fine for meat, bread, dry goods and lunches, though not for the microwave. The caveat is nickel. Most food-grade stainless steel contains it, and for people with a nickel allergy the research links dietary nickel exposure to eczema, gut symptoms and systemic reactions. The nickel allergy article covers what the studies found and where the hidden sources are, including cookware.

Silicone, with reservations

Food-grade silicone bags and lids are the usual replacement for zipper bags, and I use them when glass is impractical. I rank them below glass and steel. Silicone is a synthetic polymer with far less long-term data than either of the other two, and it has only been in home kitchens in bag form for about a decade. It handles heat and cold without the brittleness problem the complaint raised about polyethylene, but it is still a material I would keep away from acidic foods and prolonged heat until better data exists.

When plastic is unavoidable

Some things arrive in plastic no matter what you do. The lowest-exposure end of what the Nebraska tests measured is cold, dry and brief contact: no heat, no long storage, no acid.⁵ Move food out of its packaging into glass as soon as it comes home, let anything cooked cool fully before it touches a bag if a bag is the only option, and never reheat in the container it was stored in. Cold storage followed by heat is the sequence the complaint worried about and no one has tested. The wear points on any plastic container are where plastic rubs plastic, and a 2020 study in Scientific Reports measured microplastics generated by the ordinary acts of tearing, cutting and twisting open packaging, on the order of 0.46 to 250 particles per centimeter depending on the plastic.¹¹

Frequently asked questions

Evidence: documented. Answers drawn from the court record and the cited studies.

Was the Ziploc lawsuit dismissed?

Yes. Cheslow v. S.C. Johnson & Son was voluntarily dismissed on August 20, 2025, after the company filed a motion to dismiss but before the court ruled on it. The plaintiff's own claims were dismissed with prejudice. No judge decided whether the claims were true.^1,2,3

Is the Ziplock lawsuit the same as the Ziploc lawsuit?

Yes. The brand is spelled Ziploc, and the case is Cheslow v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-03655. Searches for the Ziplock lawsuit, the zip lock lawsuit, or the Ziploc bag lawsuit all point to this one case.¹

Is Ziploc being sued right now?

No active U.S. lawsuit against Ziploc over microplastics turned up in a search of court records and legal news coverage as of October 22, 2026. The 2025 class action is closed, and the Quebec application was withdrawn in September 2025.^1,7

Is there a Ziploc class action lawsuit claim form or settlement?

No. The case ended without a settlement, so there is no fund, claim form or deadline. Any website offering to file a Ziploc claim for you is not connected to this case.¹

Did the lawsuit prove Ziploc bags have microplastics?

No. The studies cited in the complaint tested unnamed polypropylene containers and polyethylene pouches, not Ziploc products. S.C. Johnson's statement that no Ziploc-specific data was presented is accurate.^4,5,9

Do freezer bags release microplastics?

No published study has measured it. The research cited in the lawsuit compared microwaving with refrigeration and room-temperature storage, and freezing was not a test condition. The complaint's freezer claim was reasoning from how plastic behaves when cold, not a measurement.^4,5

What should I use instead of Ziploc bags?

Glass for anything stored more than a day, heated, frozen, or acidic; stainless steel for dry goods, bread, meat and lunches unless you have a nickel allergy; food-grade silicone bags as a third option where glass is impractical. That ranking reflects how much long-term data exists on each material, with glass having the most and silicone the least.

Are Ziploc bags recyclable?

In practice, rarely. Ziploc bags are polyethylene film, which curbside programs in most of the U.S. do not accept, and the EPA's figures show only 8.7% of all plastic waste was recycled in 2018.¹² Some retailers collect film plastic in store drop-off bins, but what happens to it after collection is not tracked publicly.

Are Ziploc bags toxic?

No court or regulator has made that finding, and this article does not make it. The materials, polyethylene and polypropylene, release particles under heat in laboratory tests, and those particles have been found in human tissue. Whether the amounts from ordinary bag use cause harm has not been established.^5,6,10

Do Ziploc bags cause dementia?

No study has tested that. The 2025 Nature Medicine autopsy study found more plastic in the brains of people who had a dementia diagnosis, and the authors note that a diseased brain may clear particles less well. The plastic was not traced to any product.¹⁰

What does "microwave safe" mean on a plastic bag?

In practice it is the manufacturer's statement that the product will not melt or deform under normal microwave use. Ziploc's own instructions tell users to vent the bag an inch before heating and warn that it may melt if overheated.⁴ The lawsuit argued the label implies more than that, and the court never decided.

What about the Rubbermaid lawsuit?

It was still pending as of the last docket entry I could confirm. The same law firm filed it on April 28, 2025 over Rubbermaid TakeAlongs containers, later naming Rubbermaid Incorporated as the defendant. Rubbermaid's motion to dismiss the second amended complaint was set for hearing December 11, 2025.⁸

Sources

1. U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Cheslow v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Case No. 3:25-cv-03655, Judge William H. Orrick. Filed April 25, 2025; terminated August 20, 2025. Docket summary via Justia.
2. Docket entry 31, Motion to Dismiss filed by S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., July 1, 2025, hearing set October 15, 2025. Docket via PacerMonitor.
3. Mealey's Litigation Report. "Microplastic Leaching Suit Against Ziploc Maker Voluntarily Dismissed." August 25, 2025. Reports that a California federal judge entered an order dismissing the consumer's claims with prejudice. Subscription publication; the summary is publicly visible. Link.
4. Class Action Complaint, Cheslow v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Document 1, filed April 25, 2025, 51 pages. Clarkson Law Firm, P.C. Full text PDF.
5. Hussain KA, Romanova S, Okur I, et al. "Assessing the Release of Microplastics and Nanoplastics from Plastic Containers and Reusable Food Pouches: Implications for Human Health." Environmental Science & Technology. 2023;57(26):9782-9792. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Test conditions: microwave heating, refrigeration, and room-temperature storage, each with deionized water and 3% acetic acid as food simulants; freezing not tested. Funding: U.S. government research support (non-PHS). PMID 37343248. DOI.
6. Marfella R, Prattichizzo F, Sardu C, et al. "Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events." New England Journal of Medicine. 2024;390(10):900-910. Prospective observational study, 257 patients completing follow-up. PMID 38446676. DOI.
7. Lambert Avocats. "Class Action Against S.C. Johnson & Sons, Limited and S.C. Johnson & Son Inc." Firm statement on the Quebec application filed May 26, 2025 and its withdrawal authorized September 29, 2025. Link.
8. U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Andesilic et al. v. Newell Brands Inc., Case No. 2:25-cv-03736, Judge Hernan D. Vera. Filed April 28, 2025. Docket entries 19 (voluntary dismissal of Newell Brands, June 23, 2025), 27 (second amended complaint, August 28, 2025) and 29 (Rubbermaid's motion to dismiss, September 29, 2025, hearing December 11, 2025). Docket via Justia, last retrieved October 15, 2025.
9. Carroll, M. "Court trashes suit claiming Ziploc bags leech microplastics." Southern California Record / Legal Newsline, September 9, 2025. Used only for the S.C. Johnson spokesperson statement. Disclosure: Legal Newsline and the Record papers were launched and are owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, a business-funded group that campaigns against class action litigation (Nieman Lab, 2010). The headline describes a voluntary dismissal as a court action; sources 1 to 3 are the primary record. Article; ownership report.
10. Nihart AJ, Garcia MA, El Hayek E, et al. "Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains." Nature Medicine. 2025;31(4):1114-1119. University of New Mexico. An author correction was published in the same volume (PMID 40164728). PMID 39901044. DOI.
11. Sobhani Z, Lei Y, Tang Y, et al. "Microplastics generated when opening plastic packaging." Scientific Reports. 2020;10:4841. Flinders University and University of Newcastle, Australia. PMID 32193409. DOI.
12. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Plastics: Material-Specific Data." Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling. Data year 2018: 35.7 million tons of plastics generated in municipal solid waste, 3.1 million tons recycled (8.7%), 5.6 million tons combusted with energy recovery, 27 million tons landfilled. Link.