A company that built its entire brand on the promise of “purity” — charging parents a premium price to protect their newborns — was selling wipes laced with microplastics at levels 387 times higher than a laboratory-grade chemical control, while telling those same parents the product contained nothing but water and fruit extract.

The Sales Pitch That Built an Empire on Lies

WaterWipes is a global company selling its product in over 50 countries. In the United States, the company marketed its “Original Baby Wipes” with a set of claims designed to speak directly to the fears of new parents: “plastic-free,” “the world’s purest baby wipes,” “just 2 ingredients” (water and fruit extract), and “purer than cloth and water.” These weren’t casual marketing phrases. They were the core identity of the product and the main reason parents chose it over cheaper alternatives.

The company’s social media page stated the product was “100% plastic-free.” The company website described its “original wipe” as “the world’s purest baby wipe, but now plastic free.” The company even touted the environmental impact of going plastic-free, claiming it saved 228,594,728 plastic bottles a year — a number meant to make parents feel like their purchase was an act of conscience, a contribution to a cleaner world for their children.

Parents trusted this. They paid a premium for it. A California resident named Devery Merlo purchased WaterWipes products in May 2020, February 2021, and February 2024 — specifically because the packaging told her it was plastic-free and pure. She, like thousands of others, used these wipes on her children believing she was choosing the safest option on the market. She was not.

The Premium Price Was the Whole Scam

WaterWipes positioned itself as a premium product. Parents didn’t just buy it; they paid more for it. The complaint establishes that plaintiff Merlo and class members paid a “price premium” specifically because of the plastic-free and purity claims. They selected WaterWipes over cheaper competitors who made no such claims. In other words, the lie was the business model. The deception was what justified the price tag.

The complaint cites research showing that 72% of U.S. shoppers said brand transparency is “extremely important” or “important,” and that 47% of surveyed consumers expressed a desire to do business with environmentally conscious retailers. WaterWipes knew this data existed. The company engineered its marketing directly around these consumer values — and then delivered a product that violated every one of them.

Research also shows that 61% of Americans are concerned about the products they put in, on, and around their bodies. Parents of newborns are the most concerned segment of all. WaterWipes specifically targeted baby registries and new parent marketing channels. The company knew its customer was a sleep-deprived, anxious parent trying desperately to do the right thing. It weaponized that anxiety to charge more money for a product contaminated with the exact substance it promised to eliminate.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Fix

There is a particular kind of betrayal that comes when you trust someone with your child. Parents who bought WaterWipes didn’t just make a purchasing decision. They made a parenting decision. They stood in a store aisle, or scrolled through Amazon at 3 a.m. with a newborn screaming beside them, and they chose the product that promised to be the safest. The one with just two ingredients. The one that was “purer than cloth and water.” They paid more for it because they believed their child deserved better. That belief was manufactured and sold back to them as a lie.

Devery Merlo purchased WaterWipes three times over four years — in 2020, 2021, and 2024. Each purchase represented a moment of trust extended to a company that did not deserve it. Every wipe she used on her child, every diaper change, every gentle clean of a newborn’s umbilical cord stump (WaterWipes specifically marketed for this use on their website), carried microplastics that the company knew — or should have known — were there. The product was in contact with infant skin that is scientifically documented to be more permeable than adult skin. The company knew this too. It markets specifically to parents of newborns.

The science here is not speculative. Microplastics exposure during the neonatal period is linked to developmental changes across multiple body systems: digestive, reproductive, central nervous, immune, and circulatory. Low-dose exposure during early developmental stages has been found to produce long-term health consequences. These are not risks that parents consented to. They were never told. They were actively deceived into believing the opposite was true.

What makes this ledger especially damning is the structural power imbalance. The complaint states plainly: “Reasonable consumers are not in a position to access or use the sophisticated testing equipment necessary to discover whether microplastics exist in the Product.” Parents had no way to verify the claim. They could read the label. They could trust the brand. That was all they had. WaterWipes built its entire profit model on the fact that ordinary people cannot afford a fluorescent-dye microplastic filtration test. It exploited the gap between what parents could verify and what the company could claim. That gap is where the fraud lived.

The company was sent a formal demand letter on April 24, 2025, giving it 30 days to correct its labeling, its marketing, and its product claims. WaterWipes received the letter. WaterWipes did nothing. A corporation that genuinely cared about the families buying its product would have acted immediately. Instead, the company chose legal exposure over honesty. It chose to keep selling. That choice, made in full knowledge of the contamination, tells you everything you need to know about whose interests this company actually serves.

The harm here is not only biological. It is the erosion of the one thing that parents are supposed to be able to do: protect their children. The “plastic-free” label didn’t just mislead. It colonized the decision-making process of millions of parents, replacing their judgment with a corporate fiction. Every parent who trusted that label lost something that no settlement check will restore — the certainty that they chose correctly.

Legal Receipts: Their Own Words Condemn Them

“Testing by a third-party lab revealed the presence of microplastic in the Product at levels 387x the level of microplastic particles in the control (laboratory grade isopropyl alcohol).” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 13; confirmed in Paragraph 67. Test period: November 12 to December 16, 2024. Laboratory: Parverio Inc., West Henrietta, NY.

“WaterWipes states that the packaging may still contain plastics, but intentionally fails to state that the Product itself may also contain microplastics from its marketing materials. This disclosure about packaging, combined with silence about the Product, further leads consumers to believe that the wipes are plastic-free.” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 72. This is the packaging disclaimer used as cover while concealing contamination of the wipes themselves.

“Defendant made the misleading statements and representations willfully, wantonly, and with reckless disregard for the truth.” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 93 and Paragraph 126. This language appears twice in the complaint, once for California subclass claims and once for all national class members.

“The testing showed that there were microplastics found throughout the Product, not just in the top wipe but also further down the stack.” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 68. This confirms the contamination is systemic, not surface-level or incidental.

“Defendant received the letter but has failed to comply with the requested relief.” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 104. WaterWipes received the April 24, 2025 demand letter and took zero corrective action before the lawsuit was filed on June 2, 2025.

“Defendant has been unjustly enriched at the expense of consumers by misrepresenting its Product as ‘plastic-free’ and pure when it in fact contains microplastics. Consumers purchased the Product under the reasonable belief — based on Defendant’s representations — that it was free from plastic contaminants.” — Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 138. Count VI: Unjust Enrichment, filed on behalf of all class members nationwide.

Societal Impact Mapping: The Damage Beyond One Lawsuit

Public Health

The science cited in the complaint is unambiguous and peer-reviewed. Microplastics have been found in every human placenta and testicle studied, in every blood sample taken, and in human hearts. Once microplastics enter the bloodstream, they spread throughout the body, stress the immune system, and have been found to increase the rate at which cancer cells spread. These are not hypothetical risks. This is the documented state of human bodies already saturated with plastic.

For infants, the risk profile is worse. The complaint cites scientific research establishing that newborns and young children have thinner, more permeable outer skin layers than adults, which means microplastics can pass into their bodies at higher rates through skin contact alone. WaterWipes are pressed against infant skin repeatedly, multiple times a day, from birth. The complaint identifies exposure risks across the digestive, reproductive, central nervous, immune, and circulatory systems — systems that are in active development during infancy and therefore most vulnerable to disruption.

The population-level consequences of this kind of exposure are long-term and poorly understood in their full scope, which is precisely what makes it so dangerous. Microplastic exposure during the neonatal period is linked to the development of multiple illnesses in adulthood. These children cannot consent, cannot advocate for themselves, and cannot even know what was done to them. The harm will manifest years or decades from now, in bodies that were compromised before their owners could walk or talk.

The complaint also notes that microplastics have been shown to leach hazardous chemicals and have been linked specifically to cancer, weakened immune systems, endocrine and reproductive problems, nervous system damage, hearing loss, and metabolic disturbances. These are not edge-case outcomes. For a product designed for the most vulnerable human bodies in existence, this list of risks is a comprehensive indictment of every marketing claim WaterWipes ever made.

Environmental Degradation

Microplastics are any plastics less than five millimeters in length that result from larger plastic debris degrading over time. Plastic pollution is now so pervasive that a 2019 study commissioned by World Wildlife Fund International estimated that the average person could be consuming upwards of 5 grams of plastic every week — roughly the weight of an entire credit card. WaterWipes built its premium market position on the consumer response to exactly this crisis, positioning itself as the conscientious alternative.

The company went so far as to advertise specific environmental metrics to validate its “plastic-free” identity: saving 228,594,728 plastic bottles a year, 3.28 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water, and 2,039 tonnes of packaging waste. These claims were presented to consumers as evidence of genuine environmental commitment. They were marketing content designed to give parents permission to feel good about their purchase. The product itself, however, was shedding microplastics — the precise form of pollution most harmful to aquatic ecosystems, human waterways, and the food chain — directly onto children’s skin and into the household waste stream with every use.

The specific irony is brutal: a company claiming to reduce plastic pollution was selling a product that generates microplastic contamination, capturing market share from consumers who were trying to reduce their environmental footprint. Every parent who switched to WaterWipes from a competitor, motivated by the “plastic-free” claim, may have chosen a product that was contributing to exactly the harm they were trying to avoid.

Economic Inequality

WaterWipes charged a premium price. That is explicit in the complaint. The “plastic-free” and purity claims were the justification for that premium. Parents who could afford to pay more for a product they believed was safer did so. This is a textbook example of “green premium” fraud: taking something people genuinely value — a cleaner product for their children — and monetizing the claim without delivering the reality.

The economic injury here is not just abstract. The complaint states that the product was “worth less than what they bargained and/or paid for” and that class members “paid an excessive premium price for the unlawfully, fraudulently, and unfairly marketed, advertised, packaged, and labeled Product.” Parents across all 50 states are included in the class. The amount in controversy exceeds $5,000,000 (enough to pay a year of groceries for roughly 3,000 average American families). That is the floor, not the ceiling.

Critically, the economic harm compounds the health harm. Parents who paid more for this product did so believing they were buying safety. Families with fewer resources who couldn’t afford the premium were excluded from this “choice.” And the families who did pay the premium received neither safety nor the honest transaction they were promised. The lie extracted money from the people most motivated by protection and delivered contamination instead.

The Cost of a Deception

What Now: Who Is Watching and What You Can Do

Corporate Roles to Hold Accountable

Regulatory Watchlist

Organize, Document, Resist

If you are a parent who bought WaterWipes believing the “plastic-free” label, you are a potential class member. Save your receipts, save your order history, and contact the attorneys at Richman Law & Policy (rwicklund@richmanlawpolicy.com), who filed this complaint on behalf of all affected consumers. You don’t need to fight this alone and you don’t need to file your own lawsuit. The class structure exists precisely so that ordinary people can hold corporations accountable without absorbing the full cost of litigation.

Share this story with every parent you know. The entire structure of this fraud depends on individual consumers remaining isolated and uninformed. Community knowledge is the only thing that makes greenwashing expensive. Post lab testing results. Name the product. Name the company. Collective pressure and public accountability move corporations in ways that individual complaints alone cannot.

Support mutual aid networks that help families access transparent, genuinely tested baby products. Demand that retailers who stock WaterWipes require updated, verified labeling before restocking. Push your local parent groups, pediatrician offices, and hospital baby registries to remove WaterWipes recommendations until the company provides independent, verified evidence that the product is free of microplastics. Make this expensive for them. That is the only language corporations reliably understand.