The Microplastic Menace

Environmental Threat to Marine Ecology

I'm cross-posting here from my Cosmetic Chemistry Blog on Medium to continue my efforts to raise awareness about the serious threat to the marine environment posed by cosmetic microbeads.

Microplastics, typically less than 5 mm in size, have become ubiquitous pollutants in our oceans, originating from both primary sources like personal care products and secondary sources such as the breakdown of larger plastic debris. Because of their small stature, they often are able to slip through filtration at wastewater treatments, making their way into marine environments. Their proliferation poses a grave threat to marine ecosystems due to plastics’ durability and slow degradation rate.

In the case of cosmetic microbeads, they were banned in the United States by the Microbeads Free Waters Action (MFWA) of 2015, signed into law by President Obama. It covers The law's definition of a plastic microbead is “any solid plastic particle that is less than five millimeters in size and is intended to be used to exfoliate or cleanse the human body or any part thereof.” However, this is just a start because the environmental threat is worldwide and existing in many other types of consumer products.

Check out rhe published research and the story behind my Medium blog here