Plastic Microbeads in Fresh Water Systems

Plastic microbead pollution a concern in Great Lakes

You might have them on the shelf in your bathroom and not even know it.

Personal care products containing microbeads — plastic particles less than 1.24 millimeters, or about the size of fine-grained salt — are becoming an increasing concern in states that border the Great Lakes.

The worry is they could concentrate harmful chemicals in the fish that people eat.

"From a chemistry standpoint, it has me very concerned that what we're doing as a society is conducting a long-term chemistry experiment on ourselves without anyone's consent," said Sherri Mason, a professor of chemistry at The State University of New York-Fredonia who was one of the first researchers to find microbeads and other plastics in the Great Lakes.

Michigan lawmakers are considering a measure introduced in February by senators Steve Bieda, D-Warren, and Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, that would ban the sale of products containing microbeads.

"There are alternatives the industry can go to," Bieda said. "Why are they putting potentially toxic materials into our shampoo?"

Microbeads and other plastics in the Great Lakes are a recent issue. Mason said she began thinking about freshwater plastics pollution in 2011.

She said she was teaching a course aboard the tall ship USS Niagara on monitoring and measuring things in the environment.

"I wondered if there's plastic in the Great Lakes," she said. "I was reading and teaching and was aware of the issue in the world's oceans."

At that point, she said, there were about 10 years of research into plastics in the ocean, she said.

"I was surprised nobody had looked," Bieda said. "Nobody had looked in any of the freshwater systems."

Researchers in 2012 started looking at water samples for plastic. Studies have found up to 17,000 plastic particles per square kilometer in Lake Michigan. Lakes Huron and Superior had similar amounts of plastics.

The 5 Gyres Institute in Los Angeles collaborated with Mason and brought its testing protocols to the Great Lakes. The group previously had done research into plastics in the world's oceans.

Anna Cummins, the institute's executive director, said "2012 and 2013 was the first time we ventured into a large freshwater body. We had no idea we would find those microbeads.

"It was a shock to see a sample from Lake Erie (in 2012) that had more plastic particles than most of our samples from oceans."

Of the plastic found in the samples, 20 percent consisted of microbeads, Mason said.

"That caught our attention," she said. "Plastic in the water that is perfectly round is not coming from something in the water. That is something that is being released into the water."

Microbeads are in products such as facial scrubs and toothpaste. They typically are too small to be removed from the waste stream by conventional waste water treatment technology, so they go down the drain and out to rivers and streams.

"People are really surprised there is plastic in their face wash and in their toothpaste," Mason said.

She said researchers have examined the gastrointestinal tracts of 20 species of Great Lakes fish and have found plastic in all 20.

"Smaller fish typically have less plastic, bigger fish that eat smaller fish typically have more plastic," she said.

This past winter, researchers examined the catches of anglers as they came off the ice.

"For 100 different perch, we find on average 80 percent of them have plastic in them, and those plastic counts can vary from fish to fish," she said. "On average, we find about eight pieces of plastic in each one of those fish."

The problem, she said, is the pieces of plastic pick up chemicals in the water — and the tiny pieces of plastic look like food to fish.

"When the plastic gets eaten by the fish, those chemicals move into the fish," she said.

And people eat those fish, Mason said.

"That's what they feed their families with," she said. "... You can tell them what's in the fish, and they're still going to eat it."

Jennifer Caddick, a spokeswoman for the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago, said there are alternatives to microbeads in personal care products.

"Rather than using plastic as the scrubbing source in your facial scrub, they are using things like sand, ground-up almond shells and ground-up pumice," she said.

"There's lots of natural alternatives," she said. "If you don't have to have plastic in there, there's no need for it."

The alliance has started a campaign to rid the Great Lakes basin of products containing microbeads.

Caddick said Illinois has a law phasing out microbeads; New York, Michigan and Indiana have legislation; and Ohio is considering a bill and Minnesota considered one.

Legislation banning microbeads was introduced this past week in Connecticut. Legislation also is being considered in other states, including California.

"Basically, every Great Lakes state has legislation or legislators are talking about legislation," Caddick said.

Some large companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever and L'Oréal, have agreed to voluntarily phase out microbeads, she said.

Cummins said her group took the results of its research to those manufacturers.

Source: The Times Herald

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