Years into the future, if historians look back at our convenience-obsessed era and pick one single product to sum up all of its follies, they will surely choose the disposable wet wipe. These moistened towelettes promise so much. They save us the apparent drudgery of having to dampen traditional cloths (that need washing when we’ve finished with them) or having to remove make-up with face wash and a flannel. For parents, they also offer an easy solution to the mess babies make of themselves. But it now seems that our lazy ways have come at great environmental cost. Yesterday, a report by the Marine Conservation Society revealed that wet wipes have become the fastest growing cause of pollution on our beaches. Its volunteers are picking them up from our coastline at a rate of 35 filthy wipes per kilometre. Wet wipes have grown in popularity - from kitchen and toilet wipes to moistened towelettes for keyboards . Meanwhile they are clogging up our sewers, creating floods of noxious waste, and also triggering outbreaks of serious allergies. Over the past few years, our love affair with wet wipes has grown. If there’s a part of our body or house that might harbour dirt, we’ll happily buy a wipe marketed specifically to sweep it away at the flick of a wrist. Kitchen wipes, toilet wipes, face wipes, hand wipes, keyboard wipes, antibacterial wipes, baby wipes . . . With babycare, the cocktail of chemicals scarcely have a chance to dry on our little ones’ skin before we slather them with another one. In the UK, we use on average between 1,500 and 2,250 baby wipes per child, from the day they are born until they reach three, according to the market analysts Euromonitor. That’s far more than any other country in Europe. Our obsession doesn’t stop with keeping our babies clean. We spend more than £500 million a year on wipes of all kinds, be they budget kitchen-cleaning ones that crowd pound-store shelves, or deluxe products such as l’Occitane en Provence’s citrus-scented ‘refreshing towelettes’ costing £7 a pack — that’s 50p a wipe. Our spending on these products is forecast to continue leaping by £10 million every year. Once used, they are all too often casually tossed down the loo — with disastrous consequences. Huggies pure wipes may contain the chemical Methylparaben, which according to some researchers may cause skin toxicity . Last year, a sewer pipe under Shepherd’s Bush, West London, became jammed by a blockage of fat and rubbish, known as a ‘fatberg’, that was the length of a Boeing 747. Thames Water said wet wipes were a major cause — because of the way they clog together with fat, grease and oil . The blockage caused raw sewage to flood into nearby homes, up through the toilets and sinks. It took Thames Water workers four very unpleasant days to clear. Three years ago, a similar blockage caused a tsunami of sewage to pour into the Menai Strait near Anglesey and this year Southern Water said more than 2,000 tons of wet wipes were playing havoc with sewers in Kent. The problem is that the wipes are not simply a dampened form of paper towel. They are usually made from a combination of plastics, wood pulp and cotton. The material is hard to break down and can float about our sewers and seas for years. Buying supposedly ‘flushable’ wet wipes make no difference, says Thames Water. Marine Conservation Society volunteers are picking wet wipes up from our coastline at a rate of 35 filthy wipes per kilometre . The sensible answer may seem simply to throw used ones into the bin. But even in landfill they create problems, due to the combination of alcohol, preservatives, fragrances, cleaning and moisturising agents with which they are impregnated. The antibacterial alcohol also kills the bacteria and enzymes which we rely on to break down solid waste in landfill sites — and in septic tanks, too. Don’t think that composting them is a good idea, either. The synthetic fibres won’t break down, while the chemicals and preservatives will pollute your plants and kill off the soil’s ecology. But it is the effects on humans that should worry us most. A number of scientific papers have linked chemicals in wet wipes with serious outbreaks of skin allergy problems, most notably dermatitis and eczema. Numerous cases of skin rashes have been reported, most often on babies’ skin and also on their parents’ hands. One of the key culprits is a preservative chemical — the substance methylisothiazolinone (or MI, for short). A sewer pipe under Shepherd’s Bush, West London, became jammed by a blockage of fat and rubbish, known as a ‘fatberg’ (pictured), last year . Researchers at the Leeds Centre for Dermatology and the St John’s Institute of Dermatology at St Thomas’ Hospital in London say this chemical is to blame for an increasing number of allergic reactions. Indeed, two years ago, the American Contact Dermatitis Society identified the chemical as the ‘Allergen of the Year’. The British Association of Dermatologists dedicated its annual conference to discussing MI in 2013, and persuaded the industry body, Cosmetics Europe, to tell its members to remove MI from any of their products that are left on the skin. This ban would include wet wipes, the British Association of Dermatologists assumed. But when, last July, the European Commission issued its own directive banning MI from products that stay on the skin, it appears to have omitted wet wipes. What is certain is that wet wipes containing the chemical are still readily available. Tesco and Sainsbury’s own-brand antibacterial wipes both feature MI, according to their websites. As for other brands, it is hard to tell, as research by Belgian experts showed that MI is not necessarily included on wet wipes’ labels. And once anyone becomes sensitised to MI, by skin contact with wet wipes, they can suffer allergic reactions — such as widespread skin rashes or outbreaks of eczema — simply by sniffing the chemical from numerous sources such as the fumes from paint, according to a report by Danish investigators. Researchers have linked chemicals in wet wipes with serious outbreaks of skin allergy problems, most notably dermatitis and eczema (a little girl's eczema on her legs) Meanwhile, a host of other chemicals found in popular brands of wet wipes, such as polyhexamethylene biguanide, are also suspected as the cause of serious allergies. In addition, there is growing research that links over-use of antibacterial wet wipes with allergic conditions such as asthma. This could be linked to the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ — the theory that over-clean modern homes deny youngsters the mild exposure to bugs that their immune systems need for them to develop healthy responses to bacteria, rather then overreacting to harmless things such as household dust. In the meantime, Thames Water offers an alternative — Freshu, a foaming gel designed to be applied to standard loo paper, as a DIY sewer-friendly wet wipe. But perhaps the best answer is to jettison our convenience-driven neuroses about everyday dirt and germs. As study after study has shown, the safest and most effective answer to dangerous dirt is simple soap and water.
Love affair with wipes has grown recently - from kitchen to keyboard wipes . They save dampening traditional cloths or removing make-up with a flannel . Once used they are often tossed down loo with disastrous consequences . Report revealed they are fastest growing cause of pollution on beaches . Marine Conservation Society volunteers pick up at rate of 35 wipes per km . A spokesman for Huggies has said that Methylparaben has not been used in the company’s baby wipes since April 2014. A spokesman for Dermalogica has said that its skin purifying wipes have not contained Triclosan since 2007.