The microplastics restriction: Is your product in scope?
Martin Wong of CS Regulatory explores some of the key challenges of EU legislation covering microplastics
The regulation of microplastics represents a technically complex and policy-significant development in chemical regulation. The EU has established the first EU-wide restriction addressing intentionally-added microplastics, formally defined as synthetic polymer microparticles( SPMs). Parallel developments in the UK under UK REACH demonstrate regulatory alignment in principle, albeit with emerging divergence in governance and implementation.
This article provides a regulatory and scientific analysis of EU microplastics regulation, addressing definitional scope, analytical challenges, environmental fate considerations, compliance obligations across the supply chain and prospective regulatory evolution.
Background & regulatory context
Microplastic pollution has emerged over the last two decades as a critical environmental and public policy issue, driven by increasing evidence of environmental persistence, ubiquity across environmental compartments and potential biological effects. While early policy initiatives focused primarily on intentionally added microbeads in cosmetics, the new framework reflects a broader and more nuanced understanding of polymeric particulate pollution, including industrial and professional uses of polymeric particles in coatings, detergents, inks, abrasives, fertilisers and polymer feedstocks.
Commission Regulation( EU) 2023 / 2055 amends Annex XVII to Regulation( EC) No 1907 / 2006( REACH) by introducing Entry 78, which restricts the placing on the market of products containing intentionally-added synthetic polymer microparticles.
This measure forms part of the EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the broader Zero Pollution Action Plan. The regulatory objective is to reduce the release of persistent polymeric particles to the environment over product lifecycles, while balancing proportionality and technical feasibility for industry.
Definition & scope
Entry 78 defines SPMs as solid, insoluble, non-degradable organic polymer particles or fibres that meet specific dimensional criteria: at least 1 wt % of particles have all dimensions ≤ 5 mm, or particles of length ≤ 15 mm and a length-to-diameter ratio > 3. Polymers forming continuous surface coatings on particles are also included.
SPMs are insoluble and persist in the environment. They are being restricted to reduce environmental release, with bans, labelling and reporting requirements being phased in since October 2023. No minimum particle size threshold has been establish, in order to prevent regulatory loopholes and ensure that the restriction covers all solid synthetic polymer particles, including nano-scale particles that could pose equivalent risk.
From a materials science perspective, the definition introduces non-trivial analytical challenges. Particle size distributions in industrial formulations are often polydisperse and the measurement of massbased thresholds requires robust
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