Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumNo Shimmer: Why Scientists Want to Ban Glitter
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | November 30, 2017 07:35am ET
It's sparkly, it's festive and some scientists want to see it swept from the face of the Earth.
Glitter should be banned, researcher Trisia Farrelly, a senior lecturer in environment and planning at Massey University in New Zealand, told CBS. The reason? Glitter is made of microplastic, a piece of plastic less than 0.19 inches (5 millimeters) in length. Specifically, glitter is made up of bits of a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which goes by the trade name Mylar. And though it comes in all sizes, glitter is typically just a millimeter or so across, Live Science previously reported.
Microplastics make up a major proportion of ocean pollution. A 2014 study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE estimated that there are about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing a total of 268,940 tons (243,978 metric tons) floating in the world's seas. Microplastics made up 92.4 percent of the total count.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/61060-global-glitter-ban.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20171130-ls
Doreen
(11,686 posts)I am sure that all of you school custodians can agree that glitter is the worst thing to get rid of. When I was doing custodial work I would walk into a classroom see the glitter and start cussing to myself. You can vacuum for a year and it is still there. then you shampoo the carpet summer break and 99.5 percent is gone but the god damn stuff is still there!! Then comes that wonderful time of year when it starts all over again. So why we try to get rid of it we are breathing that crap in. Then we have the children with bottles of it breathing it in and sticking their glitter covered fingers into their mouths and eyes. Remember all of this when little Suzy and Bobby bring you that Valentines day heart all sparkly and pretty for you.
pansypoo53219
(20,997 posts)SeattleVet
(5,479 posts)The stuff that it's used for doesn't need to last for centuries.
(I've heard it called "the herpes of the craft world" due to the way it spreads and persists.)