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Some personal care products, such as shower gels, soaps, shampoo, facial scrubs and toothpastes, are formulated with plastic microbeads. The colorful particles, made usually from polyethylene (but sometimes from nylon, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate or polymethyl methacrylate), serve as abrasives and add visual appeal to the products. Unfortunately, they are small enough to pass through sewage treatment plants into waterways and oceans, where they can persist. In the aquatic environment, the microbeads can absorb other pollutants and can be ingested by animals, resulting in an increase in the amount of those pollutants in the food chain.
Under the proposed legislation, called the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, manufacturing could continue until July 1, 2017 and sales would be phased out from 2018 through 2019. The House bill was sponsored by Republican Fred Upton of Michigan and Democrat Frank Pallone, Jr. of New Jersey. A similar bill is under consideration in the Senate.
- The Guardian
- press release from Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a manufacturers' group
- Detroit News
- The Hill blog
- Consumerist
- Smithsonian
- Center for Effective Government
- TreeHugger
In July, the International Campaign Against Microbeads in Cosmetics has made a list of products which contained microbeads.
(Score: 1) by TheReaperD on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:30PM
Sure, it's not a solid mass you can walk across, it's floating garbage, after all. But, from the pictures I've seen, being able to sail through it without seeing it, not a chance. Now, being able to sail near it, or on the outer edges of the larger zone estimates, sure. The ocean is a big place and the outer edges ebb and flow but, the core mass is impossible to miss. It looks solid, even though it isn't.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:38PM
But, from the pictures I've seen, being able to sail through it without seeing it, not a chance.
A lot of the pictures of it aren't really even pictures of it, just stock picture of garbage floating in water, usually in costal areas.
From wikipedia:
The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.[2] Despite its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic particles in the upper water column.
Still an environmental disaster, but a lot of the portrayals of it are downright dishonest.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday December 13 2015, @01:33AM
Speaking as someone who has sailed (mostly motored) through the Pacific High more than a couple of times. Sir Finkus is correct. You will occasionally see some pieces of fishing gear, net floats (We used to look for the glass floats from Japanese vessels but starting in the late 60s they switched to plastic floats), and an sometimes you'd see something like a plastic bottle or jar or maybe some bit of line or net or sometimes a wooden piling or beam. We used to try to gather up the bottles and jars and bits of net and line, if they weren't too big.
One time we came across a piece of net around 20' long and 8~10' deep on 4 plastic net floats. it was loaded with barnacles, coral, sea weed and even small crabs. We just were able to cut off the floats and the net sank.
The thing to remember is that on a sail boat you are only a few feet above sea level and unless you climbed or were hoisted up the mast, you can not see much further than 1 1/2 mile of the surface in any direction. Even when the conditions were calm and the sea flat as it usually is in the center of the high.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday December 13 2015, @03:41AM
So as I speculated above -- that piece of floating trash was evidently a dandy habitat for a whole lot of living things. Did sinking it do net good or net harm??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.