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California Votes To Ban Microbeads
New submitter Kristine Lofgren writes: The California Assembly just passed a vote to ban toxic microbeads, the tiny flecks found in toothpastes and exfoliants. Microbeads cause a range of problems, from clogging waterways to getting stuck in gums. The ban would be the strictest of its kind in the nation. As the article notes, the California Senate would need to pass a bill as well, for this ban to take effect, and if that happens, the resulting prohibition will come into place in 2020. From the article: Last year, Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to pass a ban on the usage of microbeads in cosmetics, approving a law that will go into effect in 2018, and earlier this year two congressmen introduced a bipartisan bill to outlaw the use of microbeads nationwide. And for exceptionally good reason; the beads, which serve as exfoliants and colorants are a massive source of water pollution, with scientists estimating that 471 million plastic microbeads are released into San Francisco Bay alone every single day.
yes yes ... but it says "exceptionally good reason" ... there must be harm ... exceptionally serious harm ... right?
So how much pollution do 471million microbeads actually make?
The article reads like a environmentalist pamphlet.
Is there any real studies to support this or is it an artificial problem?
Why do corporations get a free pass to dump shit into people and the environment on a massive scale with no real oversight, yet we still improson people for growing the wrong plants.
471 million potatos is a lot of potatos. .2mm bits of plastic is enough to cover in plastic all of the living rooms in California.
471 million
Wait - no - one living room. Or about a dinner-plates worth a day.
Are the fish capable of digesting plastic? One would think that it would just pass through. It's hard to know whether or not to take the matter seriously, as (sadly) the average environmentalist has no idea what the definition of toxic is. One would think that if there were some interesting data the article would at least link it.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
This isn't the first time that I've seen mention of this. If I'm remembering previous articles correctly, these beads are ending up being consumed by very small sea creatures, who cannot process them, who then are eaten by bigger sea creatures, who also cannot process them, etc, until they build up in large concentrations toward the top of the foodchain to poison those alpha predators. There's concern for humans that eat those largest animals too.
Honestly I'm surprised that they were legal in the first place, but if there wasn't an explicit law against them then I guess the companies that have manufactured and used them were free to do so regardless of any perceived morality on the matter.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Maybe they will ban tobacco next since it eventually kills most of the people using it. Oh, wait... they won't.
Lots of people are addicted to air... not breathing it is a leading cause of death for most people!
yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbeads
but it is basically putting tiny bits of plastic in the water supply... which is obviously a terrible idea.
and must now pass the senate in order for it to go into effect as law on January 1, 2020.
Why wait so long for the law to take effect?
It's a little more than that. Studies have shown toxic pollutants bind to microbeads. Other studies have shown fish are eating the microbeads and absorbing the toxins. Humans eat fish. Microbeads are poisoning our food supply, and a number of governments are sponsoring studies to learn more about their impact.
Here's another article:
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/environmentalists-drawing-a-bead-on-microplastics
it's a little different. The microbeads bind to organic pollutants that were already in the water. Animals that eat the beads absorb the pollutants from every bead that passes through their system. The pollutants then move up the foodchain after leaving the beads behind in feces. Even small to medium sized fish are found to have 10-20 beads in their digestive tract at any given time.
depends on the type of plastic and whether or not a given plastic can be digested by microorganisms.
Microbeads are mostly made out of PE for example which isn't readily biodegradable under many circumstances. However, there are some species of bacteria that can digest it.
The issue is less the beads than what they're made out of and what sort of treatment the water goes through
If the sewage treatment process is letting microbeads in any great quantity into the rivers or ocean then I have to ask what else are we releasing? Because PE has a LOWER density than water, it should float on the surface. Which means in a settling tank, it should get skimmed off the surface. If it isn't getting skimmed off the surface, then what else aren't we skimming off the surface?
If your water treatment system is anything short of a complete joke... how are microbeads even getting through the system at all?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
yes yes ... but it says "exceptionally good reason" ... there must be harm ... exceptionally serious harm ... right?
I know it was a slanted story as soon as I saw "toxic" in the headline. These beads are not toxic. Also, the story says they are 5mm in diameter, which is the size of a large pea. According to Wikipedia, they are far smaller than that, from 1mm to 0.001mm. TFA says that 471 million of them enter SF Bay every day. But taking the average size at 0.1mm and a density of 1gm/cc, that is less than a kg.
... FREEDOM!!!!
I mean Benghazi..... as my right wing 'friends' would say....
hi
There's concern for humans that eat those largest animals too.
so that make one more important concern.
Thanks
shaun
www.absdecorators.co.uk
I don't think these beads are toxic to us. Especially if they have been put in toothpaste. PE plastic is not digestible by our guts and our gut bacteria.
Maybe they are broken down into something nasty by oceanic zooplankton? I know some small fish eat them, and achieve no nutritional value of them, expending energy to catch up with them in water and therefore starving as a result.
I also read an article about a company experimenting with the idea of using microbeads to lower the caloric levels of food, basically serving us flavor/food colored blended beads that would taste like cake but slide right through? I don't think these beads should be let into the oceans, but so many things we put down the drain shouldn't either. So sewage treatment should already fix this.
You explicitly make it impossible for anyone to determine your contribution to the community.
You just make mindlessly hostile comments to random posts on the site.
Kill yourself.
If your words were source code, it wouldn't compile.
lucm, indeed.
We can get along fine without useless marketing crap.
The article doesn't support the statement that the microbeads are toxic.
Is there any information that the microbeads are actually toxic?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Sounds like someone needs to produce a line of McMicroBead burger, with extra PE.
They're so small and light that their denisty doesnt really come into play, even in the settling tanks. the lightest of currents can keep them from settling out. the part of the WTP most likely to catch them is the filtration.
the biggest problem is significant amounts manage to still make it through the plant and into wildlife, where they are small enough to collect in tissue and fuck em up.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Microbead manufacturers will reform and will start manufacturing non-toxic naturally dis-integrable microbead. The article should have clarified that 417 million microbeads are, assuming the diameter of microbead is 0.2 millimeter, less than 400 liters, or approximately 100 gallons.
Mindless pollution is wrong, no question about it.
However don't be surprised that in 2068 your grandchild will be arrested and will receive 12 month cryonic-freeze (an equivalent of 12 month jail time) because he/she violated 2018 law, by simply throwing away some garbage (which happened to have micro-particles, which were considered equivalent to micro beads)
The problem is not that microbeads are a issue in themselves, but more like that thy are a great absorbent of other chemicals. So it makes it a lot easier for chemicals to neter the food chain since many animals would eat fish or drink water that's contaminated with microbeads. And these are chemicals that would otherwise either dissipate or disintegrate from the water treatment cycle or UV rays outside.
I won't take you seriously until I see some unit tests.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
My bet is that the beads are too small to get caught by the trap in the clarifier.
Well again, yes it will sort out if you give it enough time. The question is how long does it take?
As to collecting in tissues... that's great and I don't really want to talk about that. What is interesting to me is why the settling tanks aren't removing them.
What is the cycle time of sewage in to treated water out? How long? Maybe if it spent more time in the tanks we could filter this out.
ANd again, I'm not trying to argue against banning the crap. ban it. I do not care. My issue is that if this is making it through then there is something else wrong in the system.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If the sewage treatment process is letting microbeads in any great quantity into the rivers or ocean then I have to ask what else are we releasing?
You can ask, they won't know because they don't test for that.
That's why I eat only organisms without a digestive tract.
yeah but why are the microbeads making it through the water treatment process at all if they've lower density than water?
These microbeads have a similar density to OIL. So if you're not filtering out microbeads one can assume you're also not filtering out oils... either organic or inorganic.
Why is that a good idea? Surely we we should be filtering out oils.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well again, yes it will sort out if you give it enough time. The question is how long does it take?
again is there some special reason why we need to spend billions and billions to upgrade our sewage treatment plants to accomodate the idiots out there who are too lazy or stupid to use a proper washcloth to wash their faces?
The density of the microbeads is actually slightly less than the water, though that can change if they attract dirt. As for settling out, yes hypothetically if you put them in an isothermic tank of completely still water then maybe over the course of a couple months they would all float to the top. However, there is no time for that. In actual treatment processes there are always currents, both from the flow through the system and from thermal gradients, that will keep them mixed in the water column. The treatment process is just not designed to remove them.
they have about the same density as oil... so are we to conclude that sewage plants are not filtering OIL from WATER?
Because that seems pretty fucking simple.
My understanding of the process is that they first blend the sewage to break up chunks. The slurry goes through a series very large tanks where the sewage collects and sorts by density. The fluid in the middle is assumed to be mostly water. Then that water is sterilized by some means to kill micro organisms and the water is released.
The settling tanks are so far as I understand it... the PRIMARY means of filtration. Given that the microbeads have about the same density as OIL... I am confused as to why they're making it through the settling tanks.
Are the tanks not deep enough?Is the water outlet too close to the surface of the tank thus causing suction to pull particulate matter off the surface?
This sounds like something you could fix pretty easily.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So if you're not filtering out microbeads one can assume you're also not filtering out oils...
well if you bothered to learn how sewage treatment plants remove oils from water, you would see that the process does not involve a filter.
These microbeads have a similar density to OIL. So if you're not filtering out microbeads one can assume you're also not filtering out oils... either organic or inorganic.
Because the issue isn't just density. It is easy to chemically cause oils to coalesce or even clump together in more dense byproducts and remove them that way as macroscopic clumps that will settle.
Not at all. As I keep telling you, I don't care if you ban this shit. It is fucking meaningless to me and I expect industry doesn't care either. They have lots of alternatives. Sand or something should be just fine. Do you really think it is hard for them to make silica spheroids of fairly uniform size? Think again. Easy peasy.
So understand, I am not arguing against your ban.
I DO NOT CARE.
However, I am questioning the quality of your water treatment process if this is actually a problem.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well again, yes it will sort out if you give it enough time.
No, just because you keep repeating this in reply to every comment doesn't make it true. At small enough sizes and density differences, Brownian motion prevents settling and separation (and this does affect things larger than molecules, like milk and smoke demonstrations used in classrooms). On larger scales, you also have issues with larger thermal and other driven currents, that can take days to stop within a tank only a couple meters in size (look at examples of studies of Corlolis effect and dynamo dynamics, which can take long to near impossible times for sizes much smaller than even the smallest of treatment plants hourly capacity).
I dare you to tell us the cost of fitting tanks and skimmers into every sewer in California. Or every other body of water it flows into .. like apparently 471 million plastic microbeads are released into San Francisco Bay alone every single day.
Filtering the inputs to San Francisco Bay would be ridiculously expensive. Outlawing this plastic crap makes far more sense.
What you describe is theoretically possible, but utterly absurd in reality.
It's not a nothing issue. It's huge amount of crap dumped into waterways which acts like silt, doesn't break down, and otherwise serves to give people whiter teeth (or whatever the hell it's used for).
California has decided that's a dumb idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
However, I am questioning the quality of your water treatment process if this is actually a problem.
Have you ever heard of "Ocean Spray"? They grow lots and lots of cranberries. The crush the cranberries to make juice. They flush the dead cranberry skins down the drain. The local sewage treatment plant has terrible issues because the massive amount of cranberry residue screws with the chemical processes in the sewage treatment plant so that none of the sewage gets treated properly.
The moral of the story is that sewage treatment plants are designed to handle the standard sewage that we all dump down the drain and they are not prepared to handle stuff that is not expected.
Maybe YOU are willing to put up with a big increase in your local taxes to pay for the extra equipment needed?
I had these stupid microbeads in my hand-soap, and I found them really irritating.. I didn't know they were in it, and don't understand what they're supposed to do - other than be some sales-gimmick to paranoid "Soccer Moms". The less plastic we pump down the drain and into the environment - the better. Plastic is poisonous to wildlife and it always needs to be recycled, there's no such thing as a "healthy" level of plastic in the environment - unless it's "none". I can't even imagine this crap in toothpaste... wtf? Save the plankton!!!
Oh look, an AC judging someone that actually logs in? Shocking.
Do tell us, AC shithead, what is your record?
Not the same AC here, but would you tell me how 'Kamashock' is not anonymous?
My understanding of the process is
wrong
I don't see the actual harm that microbeads are supposed to cause. If they are inert, they are effectively no different from sand. If they are not inert, they just harmlessly biodegrade into carbon dioxide and water.
The problem isn't necessarily the beads or whether or not they're toxic (though obviously, if they're made of a toxic material and being ingested that's a big problem).
What's of concern is that it could potentially contribute, in a huge way, to a problem referred to as "plastic soup," a conglomeration of plastics from various sources, microbeads, regular trash being dumped at sea and so on. This isn't a small problem, either. The largest of "patches" of plastic debris could potentially be twice as big as the entire landmass of the U.S. as you can see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The exact size of the patch is hard to estimate for another reason, a lot of these plastics are _extremely_ difficult to see, particles that are essentially suspended just below the surface of the water. There are a lot of big, solid items in these patches that can be identified, but it's the former "soup" of plastic particles that's the real issue...they're hard to identify, they're hard to clean up and in the case of microbeads, they're hard to filter out of the water supply. Considering they offer little to no benefit in any of their commercial applications that I can see, I'm wondering why they haven't been banned already. I could easily see these cosmetic companies producing a fine-grained sand from any tropical beach and calling that "all natural microdermabrasion," it'd do less harm and people would probably buy the hell out of the stuff.
You're a massive idiot. :)
wow... so, that's more evidence that you're stupid.
You can filter water without using a grate. Rivers for example filter water yet contain no "filter" as you term it. Oceans filter water yet also contain no "filter".
The treatment plants DO actually use a filter though it is quite large and only stops large things from passing certain pipes.
The filtration process is mostly done through density separation. That is, the filter is gravity. And guess what, the microbeads have a lower density than water. So they should be filterable by that method.
Next issue.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
they have about the same density as oil... so are we to conclude that sewage plants are not filtering OIL from WATER?
Define oil.
Though if you are talking something like motor oil, somebody is breaking the law, as such should not be disposed of through the sewage system.
I did find this though:
The Coast Guard estimates that sewage treatment plants discharge twice as much oil into coastal waters as do tanker accidents - 15 million gallons per year versus 7.5 million gallons from accidents. A major source of this pollution is dumping of oil by do-it-yourselfers into storm drains and sewers.
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/pubs/89039a.txt
That is from 1989 though, so it may be out of date, but still, I wouldn't make assumptions.
Frankly, I think it is weird that they're even throwing it out.
So they decided to plead guilty to 21 misdemeanor criminal charges and pay a $400,000 fine instead of finding a use for it. If there was a use for it they could have avoided all of that.
And guess what, the microbeads have a lower density than water. So they should be filterable by that method.
guess what, the beads don't get a chance to settle to the bottom.
"should", what a lovely word. As a computer person you should know full well that it is not the same word as "shall"
You've probably been in a prolonged coma. because the budget deficit problem was solved many years ago. Even when it was a problem, it was a problem because only because a combination of laws and court rulings requiring certain amounts of money to be spent on things while simultaneously forbidding (or making impractical by need for 2/3 public vote etc) most ways to collect revenue to pay for it.
This space intentionally left blank
Even small to medium sized fish are found to have 10-20 beads in their digestive tract at any given time.
Which is a remarkably underwhelming number.
I don't care
Yeah that's why you have taken the time to write so many posts
I can't imagine it is really a big water treatment issue since they have a different density than water and you could separate them with settling tanks and skimmers.
Please do not write a post that contains "I can't imagine" ...
If your intelligence is that limited, you are wasting the time of the rest of us.
Not the OP here. Anonymity was not his/her point. An audit trail was the point. You can read all of Kamashock's "record." That would be their previous posts. AC on the other hand...oh wait, did I just throw a crust of bread under a bridge?
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Because it's the government, and they'd rather ban something than upgrade their own treatment plants to deal with it.
They're not toxic really to anything, not even zooplankton. The biggest problem comes from the stuff lower in the foodchain that can eat it and block up their digestive system, or collect in there causing the creature in question to starve to death.
One of the big problems with sewage plants is there is a capacity limit to them, and when they hit capacity they dump directly into rivers/oceans/etc. That most happens in places where waste water and sewage are still on one system aka most of the world and they get rain.
Om, nomnomnom...
I find it interesting that the article claims California's economy is the 7th in the world. Wow. I'm always hearing California politicians whining on the evening news about the state being almost bankrupt.
You are confusing credits with debits. A rookie accounting mistake.
What I am saying is that if that is getting through the system there are probably a lot of other things in there that you don't even know exist. A better system would not only deal with this bead issue which is irrelevant to me. But it would also deal with a wide variety of other contaminants that you don't even know are in there.
Consider further we're looking increasingly to closed loop sewage treatment facilities that output water INTO your tap directly from the sewage treatment facility. They're already strongly considering that in California.
My point is that the stupid beads don't matter and what this really indicates is that the water treatment systems needs to be upgraded.
There are a lot of things that we DO know about. Prescription drugs for the most part are not filtered out in sewage treatment plants.
Some like birth control pills are actually in high enough doses that they are starting to affect the wildlife. I agree that the sewage
treatment plants need to be upgraded and a closed loop via distilation or reverse osmosis would be expensive but might be the best
way to make sure 100% of the bad stuff doesn't make it out.
I think most large companies just voluntarily quit putting these into things. I used to use a few products that used them which eventually disappeared from the shelves. I even remember the big name corporations that own the subsidiaries that make up most of the market in these sectors announcing the voluntary phase out. So is this new law even necessary?
Sig: I stole this sig.
I agree that the sewage
treatment plants need to be upgraded and a closed loop via distilation or reverse osmosis would be expensive but might be the best
way to make sure 100% of the bad stuff doesn't make it out.
Maybe you can try going to poor towns in West Virginia and tell them that they have to spend millions of dollars on new sewage treatment plants because of toothpaste and skin soap.
Oh, my, but I bet you'd squeal like a pig.
You're a whiny little punk with nothing intelligent to say.
But, hey, you can tell all the other whiny little punks at your playdate tomorrow how tough you were on the intertubes.
I'm sure your mom will be impressed.
Childish little asshole.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My point is that the stupid beads don't matter and what this really indicates is that the water treatment systems needs to be upgraded.
Are you that thick? Are you really that stupid? How did you get to be such a moron?
Your "point" (if you can call it that) can be summarized with the following:
"I don't understand how these little beads are getting past our water treatment facilities, so I'm afraid of what other scary things might be getting past the systems....ZOMG!! OBVIOUSLY WE NEED TO UPGRADE OUR WATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS!!!!"
Do you realize what a whiny little fearful pussy you are? Nobody needs to upgrade anything because of your unsubstantiated fears/worries about what *might* be occurring.
But by all means, continue your lengthy rants about the stupidity of everyone who calls you out on your ridiculous "points". Fucking ignorant idiotic pussy-ass pimpstick.
omg, panic!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
that's enough to almost fill an 8mm cube :/
Requiem for the American Dream
Even small to medium sized fish are found to have 10-20 beads in their digestive tract at any given time.
Which is a remarkably underwhelming number.
Not if he's talking about all fish everywhere. That's probably like... thousands of beads total.
Nothing posted to
Captain Planet Explains.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
yes yes ... but it says "exceptionally good reason" ... there must be harm ... exceptionally serious harm ... right?
I know it was a slanted story as soon as I saw "toxic" in the headline. These beads are not toxic. Also, the story says they are 5mm in diameter, which is the size of a large pea. According to Wikipedia, they are far smaller than that, from 1mm to 0.001mm. TFA says that 471 million of them enter SF Bay every day. But taking the average size at 0.1mm and a density of 1gm/cc, that is less than a kg.
Yes, but if we continue at this rate, then in only 1.15 million years, we will have higher than the accepted rate of Total Disolved Solids in San Franciso Bay, assuming none of it leaks out into the rest of the ocean.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Karmashock has no problem failing to accept responsibility for his or her own words anyway.
I won't take you seriously until I see some unit tests.
I'm pretty sure I don't want to see anybody on Slashdot testing their unit.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
However, I am questioning the quality of your water treatment process if this is actually a problem.
"Quality" and "design cases" are two very different things. Water treatment processes need to be carefully designed for the exact things that get flushed into them. A lot of assumptions are made for local municipal waste streams, and you often see advertisements taking care of the rest (i.e. don't flush cooking oil down the sink). Hence you end up with interesting cases like refinery waste water treatment plants producing water so clean you can drink it despite having inputs of arsenic, mercury and all the nasty bits of crude oil, but muicipal waste treatment plants producing stuff you don't necessarily wish to discharge anywhere near your drinking supply.
In short, you can treat out microbeads. But it would require a lot of investment into upgraded / changed water treatment plants across the world. It's easier to just ban the things that have very little benefit in the first place.
This isn't the first time that I've seen mention of this. If I'm remembering previous articles correctly, these beads are ending up being consumed by very small sea creatures, who cannot process them, who then are eaten by bigger sea creatures, who also cannot process them, etc, until they build up in large concentrations toward the top of the foodchain to poison those alpha predators. There's concern for humans that eat those largest animals too.
Honestly I'm surprised that they were legal in the first place, but if there wasn't an explicit law against them then I guess the companies that have manufactured and used them were free to do so regardless of any perceived morality on the matter.
I'm kinda disappointed, the Crest 3D toothpaste in the blue tube was the first one that actually manages to maintain teeth whiteness for me
Polyurethane may not be directly toxic, but what happens when its exposed to UV when it floats on the ocean, is burned, etc? Hydrogen cyanide. Phosgene. Probably not huge concentrations given the scope of things, but Fun Stuff nonetheless.
ugh its too hard to type what I was going to say
You speak about Ocean Spray in the present tense. From a quick Google it seems that this was happening around 1988 and that the company got in trouble for it.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Posting comments to Slashdot using a registered name is nothing special nor anything important. You could flip it the other way: Look at you, Karmashock, so narcissistic that you have to post comments with a name that's *yours* so other people can see how great you think your are. Except in this case multiple people, both anonymous and registered, have pointed out how wrong you are. Enjoy your life on Slashdot, because it seems that's the only life you really have.
Can you explain? Or are you just a lying asshole?
Learn to love Alaska
Could they possibly be a politician?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Although the beads aren't toxic, they can and do adsorb hydrophilic pollutants such as PCBs and other oily pollutants such as dioxins. Normally these chemicals settle out into the lake/river bottoms (or evaporate from the surface), but when they attach to microbeads, which being small and similar density to water, they can stay dispersed in the water. Small creatures eat the beads and the PCBs or whatever enter the animals flesh through the gut, and it is supposed that predatory fish at the top of the food chain will have higher levels of the pollutants due to bioamplification in the same fashion that mercury is found in higher levels in top of the food chain oceanic predatory fish.
PCBs and dioxins in the food are bad news for humans in even very tiny quantities.
However, although they are finding and counting the beads in fish, I have not seen anyone doing measurements of captured fish to see to what degree fish are capturing pollutants.
OTOH, it doesn't make sense to wait until things get really bad to decide to solve the problem. Once these beads get into lakes and rivers, there's no way to get them out.
Between any anonymous stranger's lack of record and karmashock, I'd choose the goodwill and integrity of the person without a record every time.
You seem concerned that if microbeads can get through a sewage treatment plant, then other things may also be getting through.
You are correct. The effluent from sewage treatment plants is not clean water.
Municipal sewage treatment plants only get the water clean enough so that it won't destroy the river or lake that it's dumped into.
Many things get through the typical treatment plant.
I'm aware that there are places that make potable water from effluent, but no major city does that with all their sewage, or even most of their sewage.
Among the problem with the beads is that they neither float nor sink in moving water due to their small size and density being near that of water.
Consider the progression of dispersions from solutions, colloids, to suspensions. Very turbulent water can carry rocks, while for small particles Brownian motion is enough to keep them in dispersion. Microbeads fall in between. They could be removed by building many large settling tanks, but it does not make economic sense to spend such an enormous amount of money to avoid the problems caused by a single product that contributes so little.
I think one way would be to build large lakes to act as long term settling tanks as has been proposed as a next to final step in making sewage into potable water. Microbead removal could perhaps be a side effect of that. Once again, that's expensive and would have to be done for every city. Personally, I think it would be great if we someday were able to properly treat our cities effluent, and I hope that someday we do succeed.
Rivers for example filter water yet contain no "filter" as you term it. Oceans filter water yet also contain no "filter".
These are not true statements.
Eventually, everything finds something else to stick to and then the problem goes away. That is true for the planet as a whole obviously. So nano particles don't exist as such for very long.
Geez, dude -- chill out. The parent was obviously a joke.
You really don't get it, do you?
And you wonder why people say they won't take you seriously...or maybe you don't wonder because you are just not capable to grasp the concept?
It's you who need to go fuck yourself.
Blithering moron...
You should stop now. Seriously. That hole you're standing in is now deep enough that it's hard to see you all the way down there.
In case you don't get it: You are a blithering moron. You are so stupid that you are not even aware of it. You could serve well as a demonstration of what true idiocy looks like. Get it? Probably not...
I can't imagine it is really a big water treatment issue since they have a different density than water and you could separate them with settling tanks and skimmers.
Separating really small objects of almost the same density as water (0.91â"0.96 g/cm3 - they are made from polyethylene) is not easy, and the fact is that they pass through all existing water treatment works. Plastics are in fact a serious environmental issue, 1) since they often leak hormone-like chemicals, and 2) because plastic objects are mostly not broken down into their chemical constituents, but instead break up to form very small plastic splinters and fibres. These are now found everywhere in our food chain; certainly in anything that starts life at sea: fish etc. We still don't quite know what harm they cause - the great worry is that thei will turn out to be as harmful as asbestos. Is it a good idea to allow the industry to pump these largely unnecessary products out, when it seems likely that it will cause massive problems for society down the line? Health problems cost society money, not just in form of hospitals, doctors etc, but also in lost productivity - prevention is better than cure, and it is also better for business in the long run.
And I don't see it matters for industry really because they'll just go back to using what they were using before which is mostly - sand.
You use this stuff as an abrasive and maybe the microbeads are mildly less abrasive? I don't know... anyway, they'll just replace this with very fine sand.
Sand is a natural material, and the environment already knows how to deal with it. I don't know exactly why they prefer to use plastic, but I'll bet it has to do with thei short term profit. Maybe it is a selling point, or was - I remember when it was first introduced and you suddenly heard a lot about how harsh the old kind of toothpaste was to your teeth. In reality it is probably no more than a selling point, like the current craze for putting triclosan in everything - which doesn't actually kill bacteria, but is likely to harm our health in the long run (both directly and by breeding resistent bacteria; when will we bother to learn?)
pfft Stop living in the past, everyone knows there are no more fish in the ocean.
Antibiotics and hormones go right through the processing plant. Most medicines do to.
If you want an exfoliant, what's wrong with sand?
Which is a remarkably underwhelming number.
Really! How many proportionately sized particles (say matchhead sized) in your own gut at any time would also be underwhelming?
Quite right for the government. It is better to make the polluter remove pollutants than accept them in the system and process them.
According to TFA, they are more expensive than the things they replace, so the law probably isn't necessary, they were on their way out anyway.
No shit. If the ocean is such a great filter then why is it so dangerous to drink.
Maybe you can try going to poor towns in West Virginia and tell them that they have to spend millions of dollars on new sewage treatment plants because of toothpaste and skin soap.
Lay off the appeal to the poor and other forms of appeal to emotion and look at your question again.
Then, consider that the article itself argues how California (due to its economy's size) banning this particular product (which article claims is being used because it is cheaper) will FORCE the industry to stop using it altogether.
Meaning that instead of "poow witwe tows iw Wewst Wiwviwia" (Isn't appeal to emotion retarded?) it will affect the economy of the ENTIRE USA and thus indirectly the world - because "estimated 38 tons of plastic pollution in California".
On the other hand...
Why are you OK with California influencing both world economy INCLUDING Wewst Wiwviwia evowowy (OK... I'll stop) in one dictatorial form - but not in another which would be ameliorated by various federal and state grants and caps based on quantity of produced/treated sewage, AFTER it gets voted in on a federal level?
How many poow wi... how many small towns outside California would be influenced by regulations for stricter filtration INSIDE California?
Which would produce cleaner water all-round, and not just from that one form of particles.
And really... California, the 10th economy by nominal GDP, IN THE WORLD, surpassing India and Canada, can't afford better treatment of its water - so it has to shift the cost of its inhabitants fear of plastic onto everyone else's wallets?
On a side note...
Can't wait until it dawns on Californians that glitter is made out of the same stuff, only covered with various shiny metals.
I wonder if they'll ban Mariah Carey?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Sand is a natural material, and the environment already knows how to deal with it.
Every time you get the urge to say "it's natural so it is OK" - REMEMBER CYANIDE.
Or Ebola. Or AIDS. Cancer too...
All perfectly natural.
Just like sulfuric acid - which is used to unclog pipes once they accumulate too much sand.
Or even "apricot shells and cocoa beans" suggested by the idiotic article.
Both of which soak up water, sink to the bottom and clog up pipes - calling for more perfectly natural chemicals to poured down the drain more often.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm aware that there are places that make potable water from effluent, but no major city does that with all their sewage, or even most of their sewage.
Then how do cities like New Orleans do it? The get at least some of their water from the Mississippi, and there's a lot of waste added to that along the way.
Dallas pulls from the Trinity River (less now than when it was founded, at least percentage-wise). It does pump the water into some city resevoirs, which are then used as settling tanks. The only problem with that is White Rock Lake needed millions of dollars of dredging, as the lake became more and more shallow. Though that wasn't the Trinity. They dammed that and used Lake Dallas as the settling tank (now known as Lewisville Lake, though the naming isn't always consistent). And Lake Ray Roberts is upstream of that. Not sure what the percentages of drinking water from each, but it's well filtered after. White Rock Lake is less filtered than Lake Dallas. Maybe that's because Gainsville dumps waste into the river, which needs more filtering, or maybe it's related to the rules that allow motor vehicles on Lake Dallas, but not White Rock Lake.
Toilet to tap is common. Most of the water I've drunk was toilet to tap. Only when I moved to Alaska were the main sources of water pure mountain streams that are more pure at the start of the purification process than the ideal tap water in most places. The main treatment is to clean the natural organisms out of the water.
Learn to love Alaska
Doesn't that show the water isn't being cleaned well enough?
Well, are the rest of us going to subsidize your useless microbeads?
The problem is, sewage treatment systems have a lot of trouble (at present, let's just simply say "can't") filtering them out. They go into the sewage, they will go into the sea.
Setting up filters for particles as small as 1 micron for all sewage going out into the ocean is obviously going to be a massive expensive. Who wants to pay for that so that people can keep sticking bits of plastic in cosmetics?
Seriously, whose bright idea was it to make bits of plastic, bite-size for plankton, looking like fish eggs, whose very design intent is to wash out into the ocean? And no, while they're not harmful to us, they absolutely will be to plankton - if not immediately (how healthy do you think you'd be if you wolfed down an entire meal-sized chunk of plastic?), then with time. Plastics act as chelators for heavy metals and a number of organic poisons, to such a degree that they might even be economical to mine. There's simply no way that this isn't going to have an impact.
And it's so stupid when one can just use soluble crystals (salts, sugars, etc) instead of plastic.
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
Its the seafood you eat that's the problem, small organisms are eating this stuff and then the fish are eating them and then you'll be eating it.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
then the fish are eating them and then you'll be eating it.
Do you eat fish guts ?
Between any anonymous stranger's lack of record and karmashock, I'd choose the goodwill and integrity of the person without a record every time.
False dichotomy. You can distrust both Karmashock and ACs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you eat fish guts ?
Not only do lots of people eat the guts of small fishes every day, but fish sauce is made by putting whole fishes into pots and letting them ferment. There's lots of people eating fish guts. Also, fish guts normally don't just get thrown away, they get made into fish meal which is then used for food production. Also, guts don't just sit there, they digest stuff. That includes pulling toxins attached to the beads into the blood stream of the fish. Lots of toxins are bioaccumulative. All this stuff is Junior High school level science, I shouldn't have to draw you a fucking map.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, without knowing the language I suppose it might compile, but I'm pretty sure it'd croak on the third statement.
Log in or piss off.
The only thing compiled here is a smug sense of superiority and possibly entitlement.
Please do not execute with the --verbose argument any more.
Silence is a state of mime.
How many proportionately sized particles (say matchhead sized) in your own gut at any time would also be underwhelming?
10-20. It's probably TMI, but I have more than that in my gut right now.
California has decided that's a dumb idea.
Can they hurry up and decide that high speed trains are dumb too, preferably before they go bankrupt?
for someone who doesnt care, you sure do argue a lot while sticking to and defending the same points of ignorance.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
they're hard to clean up
They'll clean up by themselves, either biologically, chemically, or abrasively.
Also, guts don't just sit there, they digest stuff. That includes pulling toxins attached to the beads into the blood stream of the fish.
The toxins are the problem, not the beads.
Lots of toxins are bioaccumulative
No, only a few toxins are, most notably PCB and mercury compounds.
Then how do cities like New Orleans do it?
Poorly. Or expensively, depending on how you ask.
The get at least some of their water from the Mississippi, and there's a lot of waste added to that along the way.
And there's consent agreements up and down, and investigations, and spills, and a lot of bother.
It's a dirty business.
The toxins are the problem, not the beads.
And the toxins don't get into some of these organisms without the beads, which is why the beads are a problem. You don't get to pretend the toxins don't exist. Also, the plastics themselves produce toxins when they decompose.
No, only a few toxins are, most notably PCB and mercury compounds.
These are the bioaccumulative compounds of primary concern, you are full of shit as there are plenty more.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are there not sands that are a fine enough grain that they can be used instead? That would at least mean we're putting something that is commonly found in the water back in it instead of plastic microbeads.
Dallas pulls from the Trinity River (less now than when it was founded, at least percentage-wise).
Dallas doesn't pull any water from the Trinity River. It pulls water from reservoirs, and not all of them are fed by the Trinity.
It does pump the water into some city resevoirs, which are then used as settling tanks.
Dallas doesn't pump water into any reservoirs. Dallas pumps water *from* reservoirs into treatment facilities and then to customers.
The only problem with that is White Rock Lake ... [snip]
White Rock Lake hasn't been used for drinking water in decades.
Toilet to tap is common. Most of the water I've drunk was toilet to tap.
The vast majority of re-claimed water in the US is used for irrigation and industrial uses, not drinking water. Unless you've lived in a few specific communities in CA or FL, you have probably never drank any re-claimed water. Toilet to tap is not common in the US, and it is non-existent in Dallas.
Dallas doesn't pull any water from the Trinity River. It pulls water from reservoirs, and not all of them are fed by the Trinity.
It pulls primarily from reservoirs that are man-made dammings of the Trinity River.
Toilet to tap is not common in the US, and it is non-existent in Dallas.
Where does Gainsville put its waste? Where does Dallas draw most of its water (previously nearly all)?
Yes, I'm over-simplifying slightly when I consider a wide, slow section of the Trinity River to be the Trinity River, but Louisville Lake is the Trinity River, just dammed and slowed. And waste is thrown in that river, and drinking water is take from it.
You've not contradicted me, just argued with me. Why are you being contentious over something you didn't even really disagree on?
Learn to love Alaska
You've not contradicted me, just argued with me. Why are you being contentious over something you didn't even really disagree on?
Because pulling water from reservoirs, treating it, and delivering it to customers doesn't fit the definition of "toilet to tap". You may want to define "toilet to tap" that way, but the rest of the world doesn't.
Then give a definition, rather than telling me mine is wrong. 99% of the jackasses who do that would argue with any definition I give, so there's no point in me wasting my time.
I get it, you are the self-appointed guardian of "toilet to tap" and argue with anyone who uses that phrase.
Learn to love Alaska
Why not use silicon dioxide? IIUC that's what they used to use, and it's a cheap industrial chemical. AND it's heavier than water.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I guess your wish to remain ignorant is interfering with your ability to perform a simple internet search. Here, let me help you. What you describe as "toilet to tap" is:
"Cities take water from rivers or wells, contaminate it as they use it, and send it to wastewater treatment plants for sufficient cleanup to return to the rivers, where it heads downstream to the next city."
Your definition of "toilet to tap" is the same water cycle that's been going on since municipal wastewater treatment facilities came into existence (in other words, long before the term "toilet to tap" was even coined).
What the rest of the world describes as "toilet to tap" is a system where a community's sewage is processed through "highly engineered, well-monitored, advanced treatment processes that remove contaminants", typically involving microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. The processed water is then reintroduced to the environment upstream of the community that originally created the wastewater.
If you like, I can further help you become better educated on the subject of reclaimed water...I've got all day. But if you can't see the difference in the definitions above, there's little that can be done to help you.
The processed water is then reintroduced to the environment upstream of the community that originally created the wastewater.
So "toilet to tap" is the same thing we've been doing for a very long time. It's just a new word for the same thing, to make people hate their tap water, and adds no useful dinstinction or information to the conversation.
Got it. Thanks for confirming it's a useless buzzword used by pedants and markeing departments, with no technical meaning.
It means "wastewater into a shared waterway that's used for municipal water supply", the same as we've had for a very long time. Nothing new or useful.
Though it makes me wonder why some idiots are so passionate about a word with no meaning.
And yes, there's no functional difference when I'm drinking the water from a toilet in Gainsville, vs from a toilet in Dallas when I'm in Dallas. Both are drinking toilet water. Both are from a toilet to the tap.
Learn to love Alaska
Then give a definition, rather than telling me mine is wrong. 99% of the jackasses who do that would argue with any definition I give, so there's no point in me wasting my time.
I get it, you are the self-appointed guardian of "toilet to tap" and argue with anyone who uses that phrase.
Here's your definition.
"Toilet to tap" programs are those in which the treated sewage is directly used as the input into the water treatment plant.
The phrase "toilet to tap" is pejorative; the intent is to make people opposed to the process of recycling water directly from the sewage treatment plants. The phrase is also used by journalists hoping to attract attention to their article.
Less disparaging terms are those like "recycled water", "water re-use", "water reclamation" and so on.
Some people consider discharging the treated water upstream to the cities water intake to be "toilet to tap", or also the process where the treated water is put into holding ponds that also serve as water intake. Those are called the same terms with the word "indirect" added, such as "indirect recycled water".
No one calls the case of upstream cities sewage (treated or untreated) being dumped into a river that downstream cities use for their water intake to be "toilet to tap". That's just traditional practice, and is called "pollution" in the case of untreated sewage.
Here is a journal article that discusses it in more detail.
http://journal.sjdm.org/14/141...
No shit. If the ocean is such a great filter then why is it so dangerous to drink.
Plus there isn't a river anywhere in the world that gets cleaner as it goes from its headwaters to its mouth.
Mod parent up. By my count, 14 of Karmashock's last 16 comments have been down-modded as "Troll", "Flamebait", etc. He/she is clearly "vastly more rational" than the rest of us.
So "toilet to tap" is the same thing we've been doing for a very long time.
That's not what I said. That's what you keep saying, and it's incorrect. As you requested, I laid out an accurate definition of toilet to tap showing significant distinctions from what "we've been doing for a very long time" compared to how toilet to tap systems actually function.
But hey, you don't see any real differences between reservoirs and rivers - and you spout complete nonsense about Dallas pumping water out of the Trinity and into city reservoirs. So it's hardly surprising that you can't see any distinction between a system that passes it's treated waste water downstream and a system that uses hundreds of millions of dollars in additional advanced technology infrastructure in order to pass potable water back upstream for a community to reuse.
But hey, you don't see any real differences between reservoirs and rivers - and you spout complete nonsense about Dallas pumping water out of the Trinity and into city reservoirs
So, what feeds Lewisville Lake? Does Dallas pull drinking water from Lewisville Lake? Where does the waste from Gainsvile go?
You don't stick to facts, and don't answer direct questions. So I assume more distraction and smoke and mirrors, and no answers or discussion.
Learn to love Alaska
Sigh.
Gainsville's treated waste water flows into the Trinity, where it then flows into Lake Ray Roberts, then flows into the Trinity, then flows into Lewisville Lake. Dallas pumps water from Lewisville Lake into treatment plants, then to customers. After the water is consumed, the sewage is sent to waste water treatment plants, and back into the Trinity to be used by communities DOWNSTREAM. This is the traditional process that for some bizarre reason you really really want to call "toilet to tap".
There, did I directly answer your question? Did I stick to the facts?
Here's another fun fact: the above outlined traditional process is not "toilet to tap" (which is simply a euphemism for the more accurate term of "water recycling"). Water recycling uses completely different infrastructure and technology, and implements a completely different resource flow. Ultimately, water recycling systems allow a community to re-use it's own waste water, instead of simply flushing it downstream - which is what Gainesville does to Dallas and ever other fucking municipality DOWNSTREAM from them.
There are no water recycling facilities on any part of the Trinity River watershed, so nobody that drinks water from the Trinity River or any reservoir fed from it is drinking "toilet to tap".
I've given you the definition you asked for three times now, and nobody is so stupid that they could fail to see any distinction between the systems in question. I'm guessing you suffer from some pathological need to be right coupled with low self esteem. When someone points out your mistakes, you feel intellectually threatened and react with childish denial. Kinda sad, really.
Cheers!
Silicon dioxide?!? That's almost as bad as dihydrogen monoxide!
So if a town dumps their toilet water into the stream, and downstream someone drinks it from the tap, that's not toilet to tap. Got it. Toilet to Tap has nothing to do with toilets or taps.
Learn to love Alaska
It seems to me the real problem is that apparently, improperly treated wastewater is being dumped. Regulating the use of microbeads will not solve that problem. At best, it will reduce one of the effects.
AK Marc, at long last you are correct.
This is a first for you. I wish slashdot had a way of commentating this day.
I'm aware that you were trying to be sarcastic, but you accidentally made a true statement about a topic that you had previously demonstrated a clear and stubborn ignorance. Kudos to the Internet for causing this to happen.
Although the beads aren't toxic, they can and do adsorb hydrophilic pollutants such as PCBs and other oily pollutants such as dioxins.
Awww, crap.
I mistyped a word and said the exact opposite of what I meant.
"hydrophilic" is incorrect, the correct word is "hydrophobic".
I do apologize for any misunderstandings that I may have caused.
Shut the fuck up junior, adults are talking.
They're for getting petite girls to show you their little titties. XD