Sally Campbell wrote a piece for the Voice last year on the damaging microplastics often contained in facial scrubs. Further research has turned up this article from Flora and Fauna International. It has been slightly shortened.
Any conscientious consumer is no doubt aware that plastic pollution is having a profound effect on the world’s seas and oceans. In recent years the media has been flooded with gruesome images of entangled marine wildlife, and the resulting public scrutiny has pushed governments and businesses to make a concerted effort to address the issue.
Much of the publicity and action has focused on the larger, visible pieces of plastic such as carrier bags and bottles. The far smaller microplastics are almost invisible, so are more difficult to tackle – but scientists are warning that their effect is just as serious. Seabirds, seals and several species of fish are being badly effected, as well as smaller species such as mussels and lugworms.
It is estimated that 95% of northern fulmars have accumulating microplastics in their stomachs that cause physical blockages, choking and eventual starvation, since a stomach full of plastic has no room for anything else, and the plastic can neither be digested nor excreted. Several studies have shown that some seabirds are regurgitating microplastics in the swallowed food they provide for their young.
These tiny plastic particles tend to accumulate toxic chemicals from the marine environment. Many of them are known to be endocrine disruptors or carcinogens, so there is a serious question about the extent to which these toxins being passed up the food chain and what implications this might have for human health.
What we can do
Microplastics can be the result of result of larger items, such as polythene bags breaking down, but they also deliberately created as ‘microbeads’ to provide the roughness in products such as facial and body scrubs. These beads are discarded in the waste water from shower or bath, and because they are so small, they cannot be filtered out during wastewater treatment. Inevitably, they end up in the marine environment, where they are virtually impossible to clean up. The only way to tackle the danger they present is not to use them.
Consumers have a huge amount of power. If we choose plastic-free products over those that contain microbeads, that choice will soon influence the manufacturers. Until now, it has not been easy to know which products contain these plastics (deliberately cryptic labelling does not help). However, conservation organisations have just launched two new guides that will make life much easier.
The Good Scrub Guide, from Fauna & Flora International’s (www.goodscrubguide.org), offers a clear, non-biased tool to help consumers choose products that do not contain plastic microbeads. This benign firm has joined forces with like-minded Dutch organisations Plastic Soup Foundation and North Sea Foundation, and together they have produced an international smartphone app called Beat the Microbead. Armed with this, you can that allows scan a product’s barcode and know at once whether it contains microplastics.
Beat the Microbead costs nothing. It is available in five languages on Windows, iOS and Android operating systems, and can be downloaded from www.beatthemicrobead.org. With Christmas coming up, make sure your gifts don’t pollute our oceans and kill our sea creatures and birds.