Obama signs microbead ban into law

“The effect is similar to grinding up plastic water bottles, other products of concern to environmentalists, and pumping them into oceans and lakes”, Rachel Abrams wrote in a story on microbeads for The New York Times. States including California and IL had already passed their own bans, and companies, some of which have started ditching the plastic, seemed happy for the feds to step in and set a single nationwide standard.

The U.S. Senate approved the bill December 18 following House approval the previous week.

IL was the first state to ban microbeads in beauty products in 2014.

“They fall right into the drain and they go right into our waste water treatment plants and then the waste water treatment plants can’t separate them out”, Freshwater Future associate director Ann Baughman said. In addition to contributing to the buildup of plastic pollution in waterways, microbeads can be mistaken by fish and other organisms as food.

Thousands of aquatic creatures – from large fish to tiny plankton – eat these harmful beads potentially covered in toxins.

The federal law bans the manufacture of microbeads starting in July of 2017.

A 2013 study found as many as 1.7 million of the tiny plastic particles per square kilometer in Lake Erie, one of the bodies of water in the Great Lakes region where much of our debris ends up. Instead they are discharged directly into rivers, lakes, and the ocean. And because these pieces of plastic are toxic, they are hazardous to the health of wildlife.

Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble have all made pledges to phase out the most common kind of microbead from products. Here’s a handy list of products that don’t contain plastic microbeads to help you out.