2023-07-28 14:52:22
What would a party be without glitter? Synonymous with celebration, joy, luxury, these small sparkling confetti are produced every year in industrial quantities, in particular to be incorporated into cosmetics, clothing, inks and paints as well as festive decorations of all kinds.
The party may have gone on long enough. Not content to clump on our clothes and furniture following DIY sessions, these sparkles sooner or later end up in the environment and stay there. This is the problem: these multicolored nuggets are made up of several layers of plastic, most often PET (like water bottles), covered with an aluminum film giving them their shine.
Public opinion and industry have recognized that the plastic microbeads contained in exfoliating products and other cosmetics pose an environmental risk. They are now banned in Canada, the United States and Europe, among other places. The sequins, on the other hand, have completely slipped through the cracks of the regulatory net. The few scientific publications devoted to them fall more within the domain of… forensic science. And for good reason: with their thousands of shapes and colors, and their outrageously sticky properties, they are excellent clues at a crime scene.
Instead, Manuela Piccardo, a biologist at the University of Trieste, Italy, looked at the effect of all that glitz on aquatic, freshwater and saltwater organisms. His study, published end of 2022, is not reassuring. “We assessed the chemical risk posed by nine types of glitter [après leur immersion dans l’eau durant 3, 90 ou 180 jours] using several ecotoxicological tests. Different biological responses, stronger in seawater, and species-specific responses were observed, also depending on soaking time. The species most sensitive to this form of pollution were algae,” says the researcher. Impossible to draw a general conclusion, but, in certain situations, these small pieces of metallized plastic do indeed harm the living.
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#Finally #ecological #glitter #Quebec #Science
