Pic: Glitter is revealed to be a harmful pollutant

Children across Devon may soon be losing the opportunity to play with one of the messier toys in their repertoire as glitter is increasingly linked to water pollution, reports Barbara Onwumere

The arts and craft material definitely gets into places you wouldn’t expect, and it’s so messy that people have made prank bombs to spray it inside the home of their friends. However recently it has come to light that it may have a negative impact on us in the near future, as it adds to the plastic pollution in our seas.

Glitter is to be banned at nurses as it is seen to be very damaging to the environment. It has been found that the art material usually washes into the water system and ends up in our food chain. Tops day nurseries group has insisted on this decision after fears that this particular children’s favourite could be extremely harmful.

The Marine Conservation Society commended the nursery’s “proactive approach” towards reducing pollution as Harriet Pacey, the business development director at Tops day nurseries said “we want to do something we have control over”. They claimed that the discovery of glitter’s dangers is relatively recent, and they plan on proposing a glitter ban to more nurseries throughout the country. Pacey believes that most parents would back the change.

Managing director Cheryl Hadland said as there are 22,000 nurseries in the country, they understand how much glitter they could potentially be going through, which results in damaging effects on the environment. So Scientific expertise, Alice Horton, an ecotoxicologist at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has stated that as glitter is a microplastic it is just as harmful as other plastics, such as the plastic bags which government has been attempting to combat in recent years.