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Youre trying to distract me, says my husband, to whom Im helpfully reciting these facts.
RAZZLE-DAZZLEIn October the EU banned microplastic glitter, prompting a wave of reformulations in cosmetics.
He should have been a lawyer.
Tell me youre not about to fill our house with glitter.
The delicate thing is that I am.
Without light, glitter just looks like particles, Davy says.
But when the light hits, it comes alive.
Theyve made their way to locations as far-flung as the Mariana Trench and Mount Everest.
All the glitter ever made still exists.
Remember how in the 18th century Antoine Lavoisier declared that matter can never be destroyed?
I think he meant glitter.
In October the European Union, inferring thatmicroplasticsshouldnt be so omnipresent, bannedmicroplastic glitter.
How many pounds of microplastics have you licked off your lips in your decades of adulthood?
I call Phoebe Stapleton, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers.
Microplastics are in our blood, our placentas, our body tissues.
Theyre everywhere weve looked so far, she says.
The sources of our internal microplastics are wide.
Glittery makeup isnt of any more concern than all other sources of microplastics.
But there isnt any less concern either.
But then I have an epiphany!
Remember edible glitter, that modish ingredient which sparkled atop lattes and pizza circa 2017?
I eagerly retrieve my baking sheet.
I apply it as lip gloss and look like I have smallpox.
Might professionally made edible glitter offer more promise?
Corn muffins have never been so golden!
I pour Champagne Rose Gold Fancy Sprinkles into my seltzer and cheers to my success.
But my cheers were premature.
What I want is sparklymakeup,not muffins.
Attempts to suspend Fancy Sprinkles in Vaseline are only nominally more successful than my efforts with salt.
I cant achieve anything likeEuphorias glittery tears.
Perhaps Ive been doing needless work.
Maybe cosmetics companies have already figured this out.
Its going to push innovation.
Its a necessary and ultimately good thing.
He sends me a lipstick that twinkles with microscopic gold, even once applied.
I feel like Beyonce.
On to more experiments!
Microplastic glitters were never an option.
We said to our labs: hey dont show us anything that isnt cleanly formulated, Chavez says.
The glitter in all of them comes from sustainably mined, finely milled mica or borosilicate.
I think about gluing some to my nails.
But I dont have to!
Bioglitter is the shimmer in all of Nails Incs Bioglitter polish.
I paint some on and flutter around like a climate-resilient fairy.
But why not flutter around like a morpho butterfly?
All get their remarkable effects from something called structural color, which relies on microstructures that interfere with light.
And thatthankfullywe wont have to cause further ecological insult to get there.
Prop Stylist: Lune Kuipers.
