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Comment by ohadron | Hacker News Reader

Here's a huge thread on Reddit trying to figure out which mystery industry is the largest buyer of glitter: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0...

No conclusive results yet, but I believe Reddit will deliver.

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Currency is my favorite theory from this (and would explain the extreme secrecy). Take a look inside your wallet, it's probably a little glittery.

(Related: For those who enjoyed the photos in this article, make sure to follow the photographer's Instagram, it's incredible. https://www.instagram.com/chrismaggio/)

I thought defense would be another likely user. Chaff would use huge quantities of it.

Chaff is a little different. For instance, most glitter is plastic, and plastic wouldn't do any good against radar. Here's what it really looks like:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Usnchaff...

But but metallized plastic!

Yup, wiki says it can be metallized plastic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

Doesn't chaff work by being an aerial? And so it needs to be a certain length?

http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/fil...

> Chaff consists of aluminum-coated glass fibers (also referred to as dipoles) ranging in lengths from 0.8 to 0.75 cm.

> Figure 1. Radio frequency chaff cartridges (Air Force version RR-188/AL, top; Navy version RR-144/AL, bottom) and chaff fibers (right). Fibers of different lengths can be seen in the Navy operational version (clear cylinder). These lengths correspond to the frequency modes of the radar spectrum

I thought the answer was right in the article: Automotive paint. They've got a lot of surface area to cover, and car companies want their vehicles to shine.

Makes sense and could be it, but somewhere in that reddit thread there's a car paint guy who claims they use pure aluminium particles and not just aluminium painter polymer.

I don't think automotive manufacturers would be worried about people knowing that their shiny paint contains glitter. Also, there are a lot of cars in the world, but most just get painted once.

My first guess would be a consumable. Maybe food-related, where we don't expect (or want) glitter. The "toothpaste" guess sounds like it's on the right track. "Fast food" wouldn't entirely surprise me, either.

It's still probably under NDA and the glitter suppliers are contractually forbidden from revealing their customers. It'd be up to the customer to reveal it.

I thought the answer was given in the article as Revlon. Nail polish, eyeshadow, lipstick, blush... all can contain micro glitter particles. I wonder, what is the total surface area painted by cosmetics each year?

That's hardly secretive or unexpected, though - everyone knows cosmetics contain glitter

I don't think most consumers know that their lipstic or eyeshadow contains microplastics.

I'd wager that they either know or don't want to know...

I didn’t. Had I considered it I would have assumed that at least in the US regulations would prohibit its inclusion.

Whatever the product may be, it sparkles, so it can’t be much of a secret.

Does this product contain glitter? https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-djINoSKP6FQ/T_2q9sPNqZI/AAAAAAAAA...

Probably, no. My guess is it contains small metal particles. But if I wanted to determine that, I wouldn’t look at a photo. I would read the ingredients.

A lot of cosmetics straight up contain phthalates as an intentionally added ingredient.

I thought that too but I think that line was just worded awkwardly. It was meant as a change of topic to end the writer's insistence.

For reference:

> I asked if she would tell me off the record. She would not. I asked if she would tell me off the record after this piece was published. She would not. I told her I couldn’t die without knowing. She guided me to the automotive grade pigments.

This is the answer, the article isn’t being particularly subtle about it.

I'm guessing floor tiles/fake stone benchtops. Huge market that would require a lot of glitter and it's not something you initially think would contain glitter. The expensive fake stone benchtops would feel "cheaper" if you knew that it was just glitter making them look good.

I was thinking asphalt and concrete - it seems that New York uses a specific percentage of mica flakes in their sidewalks, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that roadways would use something to aid reflectivity as well.

Why would a local government be secretive about what they put in roads?

I looked road markings up earlier because it was also my first guess, but everything I've seen indicates they just use plain glass microspheres in reflective paint and such.

For the roads themselves, more reflective might be a bad thing anywhere that sees heavy snowfall. Less sunlight absorbed=colder roads=more snow buildup and many other related problems.

None of these uses would need to be kept secret though.

Yeah, the microspheres have the property of being very retroreflective (shine headlamp light directly back toward a driver efficiently) and so get used in lots of automotive visibility scenarios.

I love how one of the most up voted answers boiled down to "the military"

https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0...

>defense department would be extremely secretive

>And they very much wouldn't care about the environmental impact

>A few hundred tons of glitter is significantly less bad than thousands of tons of agent orange and dioxin.

>And depleted uranium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

I guess it's possible chaff is made by Glitterex.

PSA: Depleted uranium is so-called because it has less radioactivity than the dangerous stuff (U-235).

It's a toxic heavy metal, but it doesn't present any serious radioactivity danger.

yep, depleted uranium bars are used within helicopter blades to equalize the momentum along their length. it's a very heavy metal

The makers of "Passion Dust" are pretty upfront about the benefits of putting "magically delicious" glitter in your vagina, so it's probably not them. But I wonder what flavoring they're using?

https://www.self.com/story/do-not-put-glitter-in-your-vagina

>Passion Dust is billed as an "adult novelty item" and its sole purpose is to "add a sparkle and flavor to your natural vaginal fluids to make the experience of lovemaking that much more fun and enjoyable for you and your partner." Um, ok. The flavor is apparently "sweet like candy but not overly sweet," the website says, just enough to make your partner think that your unicorn vagina is "what all vaginas are supposed to look, feel and taste like; soft, sweet and magical!"

https://www.prettywomaninc.com/q-a

"The sparkling effect can last for up to 5 days."

"When he looks down at his 'magic stick' and sees it shining like it's 'God's gift'. It will be weird, but he won't be mad!...He'll either be really impressed with himself or really impressed by you! You can tell him or don't."

Wow, yuck.

But all the more horrifying in light of talc conferring asbestos into cavities in ways that provoke cervical cancer.

I'm guessing the cosmetics industry, and they want to keep it quiet because microplastics is a hot-topic at the moment.

Lush is pretty good with this stuff. It seems that they have switched recently to synthetic mica due to child labor concerns: https://www.lushusa.com/story?cid=article_all-that-glitters

yeah i think this the most likely one as well, people wont like finding out theyre rubbing glitter into their hair/skin

It's probably the jewelery industry to help make their precious and rare rocks sparkle and shine.

I'm sure knowing that glitter is used in a diamond ring would turn a lot of people away.

Many people are mentioning chaff, and heck, literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia article says:

"metallized glass fibre(fiber) or plastic" [1]

Metallized pastic sounding a lot like... glitter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

I thought that chaff couldn't be very much. If you believe this source it's about 500 tons per year, which is very much more than I thought. http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/fil...

I too have faith.

If not to that sub, then the peeps over at /r/rbi and /r/whatisthisthing has achieved incredible findings

For sure I think it is toothpaste.

my guess was large denomination US dollars

I like the Apple products theory. All those metallic MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads would certainly add up to a massive demand.

The ones I’m looking at are straight metal or anodised metal. It isn’t Apple.

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