Is this your glitter? An overlooked but potentially environmentally-valuable microplastic

Abstract As microplasticpollution evolved to a well-established research field, microplasticscientists started to explore new avenues in the field. Yet, while a multitude of different types of microplastics(microbeads, fibres, fragments) have been well-documented in microplasticliterature, our analysis of this literature shows that glitterparticles have been overlooked by the field. However, due to the presence of glitter-based research in forensic science, we explore the idea that glittermay have the potential to act as “flag items” - or markers – of a likely source, due to the often complex and individual composition of glitterparticles compared to traditional microplastics, such as microbeads. As such, this article demonstrates glitterhas insofar been overlooked as a microplasticparticle, and demonstrates that glittermay have an important role in explaining microplasticpollution dynamics from source to sink.