September 17, 2014 — Microbeads, the tiny plastic balls added to body scrubs and toothpastes by such manufacturers as L’Oreal SA and Procter & Gamble Co., were marketed as the greatest beauty aid since cold cream. Now fish have a gut full, and some U.S. and state lawmakers want the ingredient banned
Washed down bathroom drains, the abrasives evade treatment-plant filters and accumulate in waterways. Researchers who found microbeads of 1 millimeter — the width of a pencil tip — and smaller in the Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater system in the world, fear they may introduce toxic chemicals to the food chain.
“The products look really attractive sitting on the store shelves,” said Sherri Mason, a chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, who led the Great Lakes study. “Like many people, I assumed it was something that was biodegradable, something that would break apart.”
The New Jersey Assembly’s consumer affairs panel approved a bill unanimously today to make the state the second in the U.S., after Illinois, to ban products containing the beads. Lawmakers in California, New York and Michigan have proposed similar measures, and U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, is sponsoring legislation in Congress to end the sale or distribution of bead-containing products by 2018.
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