Did you know that many of the products that you buy
legally at a licensed store, pose a threat to our environment? Whether it is plain ignorance of the dangers
or whether people know and just don’t care (overlook the want in the product vs
the environmental cause), it’s a big issue that has not been handled. One rising
controversy lies in many of the hygiene products that are amazingly still
available today. Many face washes, soaps, toothpaste and cosmetics have
incorporated plastic “Microbeads” in their products. These plastics are about 5
μm to 1 mm (Rochman, 2015) in diameter, a very small particle. As a result,
these beads get flushed and fall into the water supply. Even after filtration
at water plants, a percentage of these beads (because of their small size),
tend to get pumped back into natural lakes, rivers, and into oceans. It is
estimated that 8 trillion of these microbeads are pumped out into the wild
(Magnusson, 2014). As you can well imagine water quality, resources and
wildlife are suffering from this phenomena. What’s interesting about this
problem is how easy it is to fix and that would be to simply remove microbeads
from this products. What started with one State, has evolved to 6 states that
ended up banning these plastic pellets. And many other countries around the
world have started making the move too. This all falls under the move to environmental
sustainability.
Figure 1: (Rochman, 2015)
References:
C. M. Rochman. 2015. Scientific evidence supports a ban on
Mircobeads. Enviromental. Science. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b03909
Magnusson, K. C.
Wahlberg. 2014. Screening of microplastics in wwtp effluent in the Niagra
Region. (Sweeden). 130:62-84
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