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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.
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.
So how much pollution do 471million microbeads actually make?
Wouldn't that be 471 beads?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It gets stuck in some species guts, and some smaller invertebrates guts dramatically reducing their ability to feed.
It is an actual problem.
Another major issue is the beads attract pollutants onto their surfaces. These are then efficiently transferred into whatever ingests them.
There is very little reason to be using plastic microbeads, rather than - for example - wood.
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.
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.