The microbeads in your body wash are slowly filling the Great Lakes with plastic

[jakeXT]

Three of the five Great Lakes—Huron, Superior and Erie—are awash in plastic. But it's not the work of a Christo-like landscape artist covering the waterfront. Rather, small plastic beads, known as micro plastic, are the offenders, according to survey results to be published this summer in Marine Pollution Bulletin. "The highest counts were in the micro plastic category, less than a millimeter in diameter," explained chemist Sherri "Sam" Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia, who led the Great Lakes plastic pollution survey last July. "Under the scanning electron microscope, many of the particles we found were perfectly spherical plastic balls."

Cosmetics manufacturers use these micro beads, or micro exfoliates, as abrasives in facial and body scrubs. They are too tiny for water treatment plants to filter, so they wash down the drain and into the Great Lakes. The biggest worry: fish such as yellow perch or turtles and seagulls think of them as dinner. If fish or birds eat the inert beads, the material can deprive them of nutrients from real food or get lodged in their stomachs or intestines, blocking digestive systems.

In early April, at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, chemist Lorena Rios of the University of Wisconsin–Superior, announced that her team found 1,500 to 1.7 million plastic particles per square mile (2.5 square kilometers) in the lakes, with the highest concentration in Lake Erie. Rios is collaborating on the study with Mason and 5 Gyres Institute, a Los Angeles-based research group studying garbage patches in five subtropical gyres in the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern oceans.

Typically, the oceans contain a higher percentage of debris in the one- to five-millimeter-diameter size, whereas, for unknown reasons, the three Great Lakes the team studied have a higher concentration, approximately 85 percent, of micro plastics measuring less than one millimeter in diameter.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=microplastic-pollution-in-the-great-lakes

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Some of us who reside near the Great Lakes, drink this water.

[progressoid]

2. Rec.

[freshwest]

3. Ban this crap now! And buy cleansers with oatmeal or other alternatives. Thanks for posting.

[EC]

4. H2O's has salt not beads

and there are many with oatmeal. Why would anyone use plastic beads that really don't exfoliate.

[Treant]

5. As a Soapmaker

All I can say is "ew." If you must use an exfoliant, plastic is a poor one in addition to the problems of what to do with it when you're done.

Oatmeal scrubs are more effective and biodegrade beautifully. Calendula is attractive and similarly biodegradable.

There are thousands of choices and most of them are better at their job and then happily rot away.

[hatrack]

6. So what's the story? No, wait, let me guess - could it be that plastic is cheaper?

And as we all know, the only values that matter are financial values.

Makes perfect sense!

[wtmusic]

7. Do you sell it?

Sounds like good stuff.

[northoftheborder]

8. Thank you for this information; something I did not know.