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Should you be worried about microbeads? Pick up a bottle of facial scrub and
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there's a chance it'll contain these really small beads of plastic. They're
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designed to gently strip away the outer dead layers of your skin, and leave you
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feeling tingly fresh. Since the nineteen nineties, these beads have been used in
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thousands of products: foundations, facial scrubs, shampoos, exfoliants, soaps, face polish ...
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whatever that is, and even toothpaste. They're typically around a millimeter or less in
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diameter, so similar in size of a grain of sugar. Unfortunately, while they seem
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to be effective, they may be creating problems. In 2013, researchers discovered
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that these microbeads were appearing in the environment, and they raised the alarm
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over possible adverse impacts. Since then, ten states in the US have restricted sales
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of microbead-containing products, and similar legislation is pending in six more.
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There are also proposals on the table for a federal ban on the use of microbeads in the US.
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But how concerned should you really be?
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Polyethylene - the plastic most microbeads are made of - is pretty non-toxic.
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It doesn't cause cancer, it doesn't seem to be a problem if you eat it, and it doesn't irritate your skin.
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In fact it doesn't do much of anything, including dissolve, or decompose.
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And this is where things get tricky. Microbeads in personal care products
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eventually end up being washed down the drain. And because they're so small, they
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escape capture in wastewater treatment plants, eventually ending up in
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rivers, lakes, and oceans. Once there, because they don't degrade or sink,
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they stick around. For a long, long time. This is an environmental red flag in itself.
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But there is another problem.
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Microbeads suck up toxic chemicals, and then potentially release them elsewhere,
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including into mussels, crabs, fish, and other organisms, that may ultimately end up
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on your dinner plate.
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Of course, how dangerous this is depends on how large the resulting exposures are.
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Professor Sherri Mason at the State University of New York at Fredonia is
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one scientist working on the problem. Sherri and her colleagues have measured up to
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a million microbeads per square kilometre at the surface of Lake Ontario.
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This is roughly equivalent to a polyethylene concentration of
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six parts per billion.
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This may not sound a lot. And it wouldn't be if the plastic was the
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only problem. But even at this low concentration, toxins absorbed to the
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microbeads could be an issue. To make matters worse, organisms that do take up
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beads, concentrate them into a smaller volume, potentially leading to higher exposures.
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And this isn't an issue confined to microbeads. Micro plastics,
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millimeter-sized fragments of the plastic rubbish we're continually dumping
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into the environment, also suck up toxins, and pass them up the food chain.
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But microbeads certainly add to the problem.
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At this point we don't know how big of a challenge we're facing, but without a doubt,
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microbead raise some serious red flags. On top of this though there is another issue
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with microbeads, even before they disappear down the drain. And that's
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their use in toothpaste. Some toothpastes include microbeads to, you guessed it,
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leave you with that tingly fresh feeling after brushing. The trouble is, some of those
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beads can end up lodged between your gums and your teeth. No one's sure yet whether
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this is a problem.
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The American Dental Association for instance doesn't think that microbeads
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are unsafe. But they are monitoring the situation. That said, some dental
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professionals are worried that, because microbeads stick around for so long,
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getting them lodged in your guns could potentially increase the chances of
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developing diseases like gingivitis. In the meantime some companies are
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phasing out the use of microbeads in toothpaste,
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though mainly because they'd prefer to play it safe with their customers. The bottom line is there's
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a lot we still don't know about the potential risks of microbeads. But given their size,
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persistence, and propensity to soak up toxic chemicals, there's a pretty good
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chance that they'll end up causing harm somewhere. So next time you reach for the
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facial scrub, or the microbeads soap, you might just spare a thought to future generations,
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who are going to have to clean up the mess, that you may just be contributing to.
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For more information on microbeads, do check out the links in the blurb below.
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And as always, stay safe.