Moisturizers,
toothpastes and other personal care products are slowly poisoning the food chain,
environmental activist warn.
The
products contain non-biodegradable substances which are finding their way into
water bodies, each time they are used and flashed down the drain where they are consumed by aquaculture and finally land
on our dinner tables.
Microbeads
look like tiny, colourful dots suspended in cleansers and other personal care
items. Manufacturers like Procter and Gamble and Johnson & Johnson
advertise their exfoliating power, offering consumers luxury. But when the
beads are rinsed off, by billions of users worldwide, they flow through pipes
and drains and into water bodies.
Their
effect is similar to grinding up plastic water bottles, other products of
concern to environmentalists, and pumping them into oceans and lakes. But
because microbeads are small enough to be ingested by fish and other marine
life, they can carry other pollutants into the food chain. Thus scrubbing more from our health than they do to our skins and teeth.
Led
by Stiv Wilson, an environmental advocate, director of campaigns at a nonprofit
group The Story of Stuff Project working, environmental activists in the state
of Florida say microbeads, tiny plastic balls in face washes, moisturizers,
toothpastes and other personal care products are the most used in making the products
and they are a pending danger to human life.
Foreign
countries have already passed laws to ban the use of microbeads. Six states —
Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Colorado, Indiana and Maryland — have enacted
legislation to restrict the use of microbeads, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures, while bills are pending in others, including
Michigan, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon.
However
the same is yet to happen in the third world countries. This increases the rate
of microbeads levels in water bodies since instant beauty products are consumed
blindly by billions of people in less developed countries.
Statics
show that water treatment plants fail to process over 19 tones of microbeads in
the United States alone.
In 2013, Johnson &
Johnson pledged to remove polyethylene microbeads, the most common type of
microbeads, from its personal care products by 2017.
Procter &Gamble, another global consumer products giant, has made a simmilar pledge. Uniliver, the multinational consumer goods company, phased out the use of plastic microbeads from its Dove soaps and other products at the beginning of the year.
More than 3,00 products now contain polyethlene, according to The Story of StaffProject's online database.
