ENVIRONMENT - New Pollutant in Great Lakes

COMMENT:  I use a facial product to 'remove dead skin' but it uses ground apricot seeds.  So we do not have to use plasticized products.

"Tiny plastic microbeads pile up into problems for the Great Lakes" PBS NewsHour 7/30/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Scientists are looking into a surprising new pollutant in the country’s waterways, those tiny plastic beads found in common cosmetic products.

The state of Illinois is the first to ban what they call microbeads.

Brandis Friedman of WTTW Chicago reports.

ACTRESS:  What if you could shrink your pores?

ACTRESS:  Just by washing your face?

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN, WTTW Chicago:  Microbeads have been all the rage in hand sanitizers, body wash and facial scrub, even toothpaste.  They’re supposed to help remove dead cells or tighten pores, as the product in this commercial claims.

But they worry Olga Lyandres.

OLGA LYANDRES, Alliance for the Great Lakes:  When you think about how many of these are being used daily and washed down the drain, it’s quite staggering.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN:  Lyandres is the research manager for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

OLGA LYANDRES:  This is something that impacts the ecosystem, the wildlife by entangling fish.  And birds ingest these particles, and it impacts their health.  But also it’s a sort of a cultural issue, because people who grew up around Great Lakes and go to the beach don’t want to go to beach that’s dirty and littered by plastic items.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN:  Scientists are also seeing evidence that the microbeads are reaching the water.  At Loyola University Chicago, Professor Timothy Hoellein and his student researchers are looking for the plastic beads in samples of water taken from rivers in and around Chicago, as well as Lake Michigan.

Last year, Sherri Mason at the State University of New York in Fredonia found anywhere from 1,500 to 1.1 million microbeads per square mile in the Great Lakes, the world’s largest source of freshwater.