Tiny plastic beads used in face and body scrubs as well as hand lotions would be banned under a new House bill. The bipartisan bill seeks to outlaw the beads in the belief that they are harmful to the environment.
The microbeads are a few millimeters in diameter and are used as abrasives or exfoliants in cosmetics, but they have the potential to harm humans, experts have said.
“I don’t need to wash my face with plastic for my face to be clean,” Shelli Mason, professor of chemistry at State University of New York-Fredonia, told the Washington Examiner. She has participated in several studies on the presence of microbeads in the environment.
A tube of facial cleanser can contain more than 300,000 of the beads, according to 5 Gyres, an environmentalist group pushing a ban.
The plastic beads go down a sink or drain and are too small to be caught when the water is treated at a sewage plant.
But the problem isn’t the beads themselves. Along the way, beads can absorb toxins and chemicals such as the pesticide DDT.
If fish eat the beads, they will absorb the chemicals and then pass them onto humans when they are consumed, Mason said.
Mason was part of a team of researchers that recently examined 18 different species of fish in the Great Lakes. Every species had some amount of plastic in it, she said.
A 2012 study also conducted by Mason found an average 43,000 microbeads per square kilometer in the Great Lakes.
While there are studies showing plastic beads and chemicals in fish, there have been no studies on health issues in humans. That is because it is very hard to trace plastics and fish as a source of these chemicals in humans.
However, Mason said there is evidence these chemicals can get in the food chain.
“If you can show evidence there are these steps that these chemicals can follow then why wouldn’t you eliminate that,” she said. “If you know it is doing harm at some point in the food chain you just get rid of them.”
Some companies have already started to do that. Johnson & Johnson is phasing out the microbeads by 2017 for its personal care products.
Four states have enacted bans and 21 are considering similar legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Now Congress is taking up the issue. The House Energy & Commerce Committee meets Friday to discuss a House bill banning synthetic microbeads starting in 2018.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., ranking member of the committee, is the lead sponsor along with Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who chairs the full committee. Pallone was cautiously optimistic that the bipartisan bill has “a good chance of moving,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced similar legislation in the Senate during the last congressional session, but so far she hasn’t re-introduced her bill.
