Ketchup Ranked: Indications of PFAS "Forever Chemicals" Industry Wide

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (i.e. PFAS chemicals) are showing up in all sorts of products like period underwear, bamboo flooring, and parchment paper, but what about old-fashioned ketchup? Mamavation sent out 12 store-bought ketchup products to an EPA-certified lab looking for indications of PFAS and are reporting back those findings. You’ve trusted Mamavation to bring you topics like safest cookware sans PFAS and nanomaterials, safest organic mattresses without PFAS, and safest deodorants sans nasty chemicals, now join us for our latest investigation looking at store-bought ketchup and indications of PFAS contamination.

Disclosure: This post was scientifically reviewed by Hannah Gardener, Epidemiologist from A Green Slate. Donations were provided by Environmental Health News and Mamavation community members. Mamavation has only “spot-checked” the industry and thus we cannot make predictions about brands and products that we have not tested. Products and manufacturing aides can change without notice so buyer beware. This post contains affiliate links, with some to Amazon, which means Mamavation will receive a portion of those sales and we will use that to pay ourselves back for the testing. You can also give a tax-deductible donation to our consumer studies here through Environmental Health Sciences. Click “yes” when asked if the gift is in honor of someone and type “Mamavation.” Thank you!

Table of Contents

PFAS “Forever Chemicals” are Toxic, Persistent, & Ubiquitous

PFAS (aka PFCs or perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA and PFOS) are added to many products we purchase to make them “stain-resistant,” “grease-proof,” and “water-resistant.” In food packaging, they are used in popcorn bags, pizza boxes, fast food canisters & wrappers, the flat dish on the bottom of cakes, or certain “safe” plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene.

They are also in carpeting, furniture, & clothing as “stain-proof” agents and you’ll find them on non-stick pans, some tooth flosses, and cosmetics. Mamavation has also tested and found indications of them in toilet paper, parchment paper, & period underwear.

PFAS chemicals are pretty much everywhere, which is why they are referred to as being ubiquitous. To underscore that point, researchers have found that 98% of people in the United States have some of these chemicals (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, and PFNA) inside their bodies. Coupled with the fact that close to 100% of samples of breastmilk show traces of PFAS, it’s apparent how ubiquitous they really are.

These chemicals are also persistent, which means they build up in your body over time and do not go anywhere for several years. Therefore it’s very important to minimize the amount of PFAS chemicals you are exposed to, even if those levels are very small. Unless you avoid PFAS, your exposure level would only increase over time, which can lead to disease.

Here is the list of health problems (PFAS) perfluorinated chemicals are linked with:

If you’d like to talk to your doctor about yow own exposure to PFAS, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of Community Health Investigations has created this fact sheet to use.

Challenges Behind PFAS Testing of Ketchup, Cosmetics & Consumer Products

In terms of testing for PFAS, there are some major problems, we want to alert you to. There are over 16,000 PFAS chemicals if you count up all the “short-chain” and “long-chain” ones in the chemical category. Because of the number of PFAS chemicals, it’s literally impossible to directly test and identify all of them, and especially which ones they are. Good laboratories can identify between 60-80 of them, and some university labs can identify about 200 of them, but that pales in comparison to how many there are in commerce. The reason there is no way to directly identify all of them is because the chemical companies that produce them have not released the assays the labs need to identify them. It’s propietary, of course.

So what are brands supposed to do? The food packaging industry decided to solve this issue by testing for total organic fluorine, which is the element all PFAS chemicals have in common. BPI Industries uses the standard of testing for total fluorine to determine if a food packaging brand is “compostable” and if PFAS was intentionally added, so we’ve done the same. Same with several monitoring laws passed by the State of California.

It’s important to note that this testing is not foolproof, but it is the best thing we have right now because there is no other standard or way to test and identify them all. Most of what would come up in total organic fluorine testing is very likely to be a PFAS chemical, but it is possible for other toxic chemicals, like pharmaceuticals or refrigerant chemicals (also recently catorized as PFAS) to get caught up in this testing and then counted in the total organic fluorine amounts.

Having said all that, since Mamavation is a precautionary community, we are not recommending any products that have detectable levels of total organic fluorine. Here’s some other categories we have also tested for organic fluorine or PFAS directly:

Beauty & Personal Care Products

Food & Beverages PFAS Testing

Supplements PFAS Testing

Menstrual Products Testing

Clothing PFAS Testing

Food Packaging & Parchment Paper PFAS Testing

Baby & Children PFAS Testing

Possible Ways PFAS Can Get Into Ketchup (Based on Other Industries)

Ketchup is a unique product because it contains tomatoes, which are very acidic and more likely to cause contamination issues. Leaching can happen when heat, acid, or high fat is present during manufacturing. Therefore, because of the likelihood of tomatoes causing plastics and other equipment to leach, we took a hard look at this category, and we found some issues in 2021.

Mamavation has been testing various industries for indications of PFAS contamination, and we have interviewed countless experts on the manufacturing of different products that are found to have PFAS. What we’ve learned across industries very likely helped the ketchup industry in 2021 and beyond as they strived to clean up their contamination issues. We presented a list of potential contamination sources.

The one industry we have been investigating for indications of PFAS that we believe may be of note is the makeup industry. In our interviews with cosmetic industry insiders, we found similar contamination points at the manufacturing level that may also be happening in the ketchup industry. They were the following:

Manufacturing Equipment: Sometimes manufacturing equipment, like paddles used to stir a formulation or conveyor belts, are covered or made with “non-stick” Teflon chemicals to keep batches of the product from sticking to equipment and thus making them easier to clean. Those chemicals can leach PFAS into the product and you’ll find it in contamination levels that are well below 30 ppm.
Plastics: Plastic manufacturers sometimes fluorinate polyethylene and polypropylene plastics and do not alert brands of this. Why do they do this? Because the safer plastics have a tendency to warp over time when they interact with certain ingredients and look to be tampered with. So in order to keep brands happy, they just fluorinate those plastics when they anticipate those types of ingredients to be present. (Yes, we have worked with cosmetic brands that have had this happen to them after we tested and alerted them of levels under 30 ppm.)
Cleaning Products: Sometimes manufacturers use cleaning products that are full of different types of fluorine chemicals like potassium fluoride, sodium fluoride, aluminum fluoride and trace amounts of those chemicals can come off into a batch of products under 30 ppm.
Lubrication Chemicals: Sometimes FDA-approved PFAS chemicals approved as “indirect additives” are sprayed onto manufacturing equipment to allow for batches to pass through the machine quicker. When this happens, sometimes traces of those chemicals can find themselves in the product at levels below 30 ppm.
Fluorinated Pharmaceuticals (and Agrochemicals): Some fluorinated pharmaceuticals (and agrochemicals) can find their way into the water supply and if that water is not properly filtered before usage, these pharmaceuticals can end up in a final product. An example of this would be certain drugs used to treat psychosis, steroids, and Prozac. These chemicals aren’t necessarily made from PFAS chemicals, but still concerning.

VICTORY: Proud to Announce Progress in the Ketchup Industry

After discovering organic fluorine in 67% of ketchups tested in 2021, we followed up the same testing in 2026 and added a bunch more brands of ketchup.

Good news! We did not find a single brand that had detections of organic fluorine according to our lab this time!

So it looks as if the ketchup industry learned about our testing from our audience (thank you!) and made the necessary changes over the years to bring those levels down to non-detect.

So what we have done for our updated investigations, is change the category parameters to reflect USDA organic and packaging concerns. Now that the ketchup industry has cleaned up their organic fluorine issues, we can finally address the packaging (plastic or glass) and organic ingredients!

Product Brands We Tested

To help our community make safer choices, Mamavation collected 28 popular ketchup brands in July 2026 and sent them to our EPA-certified laboratory for total fluorine testing. All samples were analyzed using the Determination of Total Fluorine by Oxygen Flask Combustion and Ion-Selective Electrode. The detection level was 10 parts per million, meaning fluorine levels below that amount would not be detected.

67% of the batches in 2021 had detectable organic fluorine, however, the good news is in 2026 when we redid this testing, we found all brands to have non-detect results. Below is the complete list of ketchup brands included in our 2026 investigation. We’ve also alerted you to which brands we previously tested and their prior results.

Ketchup Brands Tested by Mamavation

Products Tested

365 Whole Foods Market Organic Tomato Ketchup
Annie’s Organic Ketchup
Azure Market USDA Organic Ketchup
Burman’s Tomato Ketchup
Fody Gut Friendly Sensitive Tomato Ketchup
Good & Gather (Target) USDA Organic Ketchup
Good Food for Good Organic Ketchup
Great Value (Walmart) USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup
Heinz USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup
Hunt’s 100% Natural Ketchup
Noble Made Less-Sugar Ketchup
Organicville Organic Ketchup
Portlandia Foods Portland USDA Organic Ketchup
Primal Kitchen USDA Organic & Unsweetened Ketchup
Rao’s Made for Home Ketchup Roma Tomato
Red Duck USDA Organic Original Ketchup
Simple Truth (Kroger) USDA Organic Ketchup
Simply Nature (Aldi) USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup
Sir Kensington’s Classic Ketchup in Glass Mini-jar
Smash Kitchen USDA Organic Classic Tomato Ketchup
Suzie’s USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup
The Foraging Fox USDA Organic Classic Tomato Ketchup
Thrive Market USDA Organic Original Ketchup
Trader Joe’s USDA Organic Ketchup
True Made Foods Ketchup
WOODSTOCK USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup
Yo Mama’s Classic Ketchup No Sugar Added

Want full access to the raw data, fluorine levels, and our recommendations for the safest ketchup products? Become a Member and get Free Access to the complete buying guide with detailed lab results for every brand.

Mamavation's Investigation of Store-Bought Ketchup Products

Mamavation collected 12 brands of ketchup in August and September of 2021 and sent them off to an EPA-certified laboratory to test for detectable total fluorine. The lab used determination of total fluorine by oxygen flask combustion and ion-selective electrode analysis. The Level of Detection was 10 parts per million, meaning if there was fluorine below that amount, we would not detect it. The first three samples of detectable fluorine we received (Hunts, Trader Joe's & FODY) made us wonder if it was coming from the plastic, so we also had the plastic tested for fluorine. All the plastic came back non-detect so we stopped testing them. Those brands are marked on the investigation. Our findings came up with some bad news. Over 65% of the store-bought ketchup we tested came up with detectable levels of fluorine, which indicates possible PFAS. This potential contamination of PFAS chemicals in manufacturing looks to be widespread in the ketchup industry. We strongly suggest these brands immediately begin independently testing their product within the packaging, identifying where these potential issues are coming from, and clean up their products and processing methods. (Updated: We also re-tested Primal & Annie's ketchup for organic fluorine and the results were exactly the same. That means none of our results were confused with fluoride, it's all synthetic fluorine.)

Ketchup and tomato image on white background

Not Our Favorite Ketchup

This is an update from our ketchup investigation in 2021. After Mamavation found that 67% of ketchups they tested had indications of PFAS "forever chemicals," we followed up this testing in 2026. Good news is the industry cleaned up their issues, which is super exciting. This gave us the ability to reorganize the categories using different parameters. Since in 2026, we did not find any ketchups to have indications of PFAS "forever chemicals," we are now ranking these products based on their organic status and packaging. This category are all non-detect lab results for organic fluorine and packaged in plastic bottles, however, none of these products are USDA organic.

Plastic Bottles & Not Organic

Burman's Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Hunt's 100% Natural Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 12 ppm in 2021)
True Made Foods Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 16 ppm in 2021)

Better Ketchup

This is an update from our ketchup investigation in 2021. After Mamavation found that 67% of ketchups they tested had indications of PFAS "forever chemicals," we followed up this testing in 2026. Good news is the industry cleaned up their issues, which is super exciting. This gave us the ability to reorganize the categories using different parameters. Since in 2026, we did not find any ketchups to have indications of PFAS "forever chemicals," we are now ranking these products based on their organic status and packaging. This category is comprised of two sub-categories: (1) ketchups that are not organic in a glass bottle, and (2) USDA organic ketchups in a plastic bottle.

Not Organic in Glass Bottle

Fody Gut Friendly Sensitive Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 13 ppm in 2021) (or buy on Walmart)
Noble Made Less-Sugar Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Rao's Made for Home Ketchup Roma Tomato -- non-detect organic fluorine
Sir Kensington's Classic Ketchup in Glass Mini-jar -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 18 ppm in 2021)
Yo Mama's Classic Ketchup No Sugar Added -- non-detect organic fluorine (or buy on Amazon)

USDA Organic in Plastic Bottle

365 Whole Foods Market Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was non-detect in 2021)
Annie's Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 13 ppm in 2021)
Azure Market USDA Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Good & Gather (Target) USDA Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Great Value (Walmart) USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Heinz USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was non-detect in 2021) (or buy on Target / Walmart)
Organicville Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 15 ppm in 2021) (or buy on Walmart)
Simply Nature (Aldi) USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Simple Truth (Kroger) USDA Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Smash Kitchen USDA Organic Classic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (or buy on Amazon / Target)
Suzie's USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Thrive Market USDA Organic Original Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Trader Joe's USDA Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 11 ppm in 2021)
WOODSTOCK USDA Organic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (or buy on Walmart)

Best Ketchup

Organic in Glass Bottles

Good Food for Good Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 59 ppm in 2021)
Red Duck USDA Organic Original Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Primal Kitchen USDA Organic & Unsweetened Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (**Prior testing was 15 ppm in 2021) (or buy on Amazon / Target / Walmart)
The Foraging Fox USDA Organic Classic Tomato Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine
Portlandia Foods Portland Organic Ketchup -- non-detect organic fluorine (or buy on Walmart)

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Ketchup Ranked: Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Industry Wide