April 16, 2014 — How would you react if mid-bite through a fresh piece of sushi, you happened to swallow a polyethylene bead, which you mistook for a colorful bursting speck of fish eggs? Although it’s unlikely that a polyethylene bead – also called microbead – will end up on top of your eel roll, New York state legislators and activists are working to see that microbeads never get near your body again. Microbeads are the tiny, colored spheres in cleansers and exfoliants that skincare companies promised would deliver moisturizing benefits and complexion-enhancing vitamins and oils. These seemingly precious additions to skincare products will soon be rolling down the drain, and this time for good, with a mandatory ban on microbeads, which is scheduled to take effect in December 2015.
Not only are microbeads slipping through and polluting water filtration systems, they also act as absorbents for other chemicals present in the water, causing toxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls to slowly move into our diets. There is limited research on how harmful the effects of microbeads are, however legislators and activists alike aren’t willing to wait to find out.
5 Gyre, an organization dedicated to decreasing plastic pollution worldwide, reported that two samples of tested water from New York’s Lake Erie produced troubling statistics on plastic pollution and risk of poison by toxins. In the water, 600,000 microbeads per square kilometer were detected, with some samples containing 350,000 microbeads in one bottle alone.
Read the full story at The New School Free Press