EU ban on microplastics in cosmetics: too slow and too limited
Cosmetics companies selling personal care products without microplastics are calling for the swift introduction of a total ban in an open letter.
PSF scientific statement must convince European Commission
19 april 2022
The report “Plastic The Hidden Beauty Ingredient” just published by Plastic Soup Foundation includes a Perspective-review. This document, “The Forgotten Synthetic Polymers”, is a scientific document that addresses the hazards of microplastics that have so far been exempt from legislation. The paper was written by Plastic Soup Foundation researchers and produced in collaboration with experts from the scientific community.
With this scientific document we hope to convince the European Commission that the definition of microplastics used by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is far too narrow. New legislation is currently being drafted regarding the intentional use of microplastics to all kinds of products, such as cosmetics, detergents and fertilizers. If this legislation is based on the restricted definition, many types of plastic will escape the new regulations.
The forgotten plastics
In 2017, the European Commission asked ECHA to formulate a proposal to restrict the intentional use of microplastics in order to prevent 500,000 tonnes of microplastics from polluting our environment in 20 years.
ECHA published the final restriction proposal at the end of 2020. Unfortunately, this proposal has many limitations. The biggest limitation is the above mentioned definition of microplastics, which is limited to solid (non-biodegradable) plastics. The smallest plastics (engineered nanoplastics), as well as plastics used in semi-solid, liquid, soluble or ‘biodegradable’ form, are excluded from the proposal. This is worrying, as many of the environmental and health hazards that apply to solid microplastics also apply to the exempted plastics.
The hazards for people & the environment
- Water-soluble polymers (WSPs), liquid and semi-solid polymers: Degradation products of WSPs can be toxic. For example, for polyacrylamide (PAM) (commonly used in wastewater treatment and as a soil conditioner) its monomer acrylamide is a known neurotoxin and carcinogen. Also, the liquid polymer dimethicone (often used in cosmetics) has been identified as a potential risk to the environment.
- Engineered nanoplastics: Nanoplastics (< 0.1 µm) can cross biological barriers, for example in the gut, lungs, placenta and brain, and can exert toxic effects, even more so than larger plastic particles.
- Biodegradable polymers: Although biodegradable plastics are designed to be broken down by micro-organisms, this depends very much on conditions such as temperature and humidity. Therefore, scientists are concerned about the persistence of so-called biodegradable polymers in the environment. There are also great concerns about the toxicity of these particles.
Microplastic-free future?
The European Commission will decide later this year whether to follow ECHA’s recommendations. Given the various concerns and hazards that exist for the above-described plastics, we call on the European Commission to extend the restriction to these synthetic polymers. Only then will the European Commission achieve its goal of protecting our environment from contamination by microplastics.
The call of Plastic Soup Foundation is supported by members of the scientific community. A list of signatories can be found here
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