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.

Comments

Re: RTFA

[Karmashock]

well... what size is too small for them to rise to the surface? And I should point out that eventually they MUST sort our properly. A medical centrifuge accelerates this process dramatically.... and using such things you can sort things a great deal smaller and close to the density of the medium than these micro beads.

So they do absolutely sort. The question is whether or not they do so before the settling tanks cycle the water.

How long would you have to leave water in a tank for nearly all the micro beads to sort?

That's a good question. And I'd further ask if are other things that might sort as well if the tanks were left alone a bit longer.

What time frame are we talking about here? Do we need the tanks to be left alone for an additional day? Eventually they MUST sort. So the question is whether it is practical to have that many tanks to handle that many days of sewage to process the sewage that heavily. And if not, then we need to look at other means of processing the water. Possibly some sort of industrial centrifuge would be a good idea?