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Your face wash could contain an ingredient that's killing fish and turtles
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Microbeads, tiny plastic particles found in many bath products, are likely hurting lakes and rivers.
California's State Assembly has approved a measure to ban microbeads, which are touted by big companies as skin exfoliators, the New York Times reports.
But the microbeads don't dissolve, instead entering waterstreams by the billions.
"The effect is similar to grinding up plastic water bottles, other products of concern to environmentalists, and pumping them into oceans and lakes," NYT writes. "But because microbeads are small enough to be ingested by fish and other marine life, they can carry other pollutants into the food chain."
A 2013 study found as many as 1.7 million of the tiny plastic particles per square kilometer in Michigan's Lake Erie, one of the bodies of water in the Great Lakes Region where many of our debris end up.
Because they're so small, microbeads don't get filtered out by wastewater treatment plants. Instead, they get discharged directly into rivers, lakes, and the ocean.
There, fish, turtles, and other aquatic wildlife feed on the tiny bits of plastic, which to them are often indistinguishable from food. But rather than simply getting eaten and discharged by the animals, the microbeads become lodged in the animals' stomachs or intestines. When this happens, the animals often stop eating and die of starvation or suffer other health problems.
"We have the evidence that the micro plastics do cause harm," Marcus Eriksen, the executive director of the 5 Gyres Institute, a research group who led the 2013 study, told Scientific American. "I am hoping we can translate that research into some positive action."
Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble have all made pledges to phase out the most common kind of microbead from products.
The International Campaign Against Microbeads in Cosmetics has compiled a helpful list of the products that likely contain microbeads.
Here are the products:
(beatthemicrobead.org)
(beatthemicrobead.org)
(beatthemicrobead.org)
(beatthemicrobead.org)
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