The beads are not biodegradable and often end up being ingested by wildlife.
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Major cosmetics companies such as Johnson and Jonson, L’Oreal, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor and Gamble, and Unilever have all taken steps to remove microbeads from their products, but they continue to appear throughout the world’s oceans.
A new study by a team led by Oregon State University showed that plastic microbeads are posing threats to wildlife.
What’s more, that number represents only 1 percent of the microbeads that reach the environment since 800 trillion of the tiny plastic bits reach sludge every day from where they are carried to oceans and waterways through runoff.
The researchers said that the microplastic beads are able to transfer different contaminants to animals that cause effects that sometimes are toxic.
According to the study, “Banning microbeads from products that enter wastewater will ultimately protect water quality, wildlife, and resources used by all people”. She said that the wastewater treatment plants were not designed for handling microbeads which are quite durable.
Actually cheaper than their natural counterparts and due to this fact largely utilized by producers, microbeads are usually 5 millimeter of smaller in diameter (the dimensions of a grain of sand) and used extra generally for exfoliation.
Although microbeads are just one piece of the larger plastic pollution problem, they are one of the easier ones to control. When such products are rinsed off, the plastic microbeads go down the drain with them. Other scientists have found that microbeads can clog the digestive systems of coral, eventually starving them to death.
As this report points out, the language of some bans allows companies to slip through regulatory loopholes.
Microbeads found in personal care and cleaning products are increasingly becoming rampant in USA water bodies.
“We’re facing a plastic crisis and don’t even know it”, said Stephanie Green, co-author of the new study, in a news release. The worldwide Business Times notes that Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, and California regulate or ban their useconditionally, but in some cases, microbeads are only prohibited in “rinse off” products, which don’t include deodorants and cleaners.
“The probability of risk from microbead pollution is high, while the solution to this problem is simple”, the researchers conclude in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
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Last year, Innovative United Kingdom provided funding for Canadian company TerraVerdae BioWorks which has developed a commercial-scale biodegradable replacement for mainstream microbeads.
