London: Microplastic beads present in many cosmetic products, such as facial scrubs, toothpastes and shower gels, are being unwittingly poured down the drain by millions of people daily.
These beads can persist in the environment for more than 100 years, and have been found to contaminate a wide variety of freshwater and marine wildlife, reported the The Independent. The microplastic beads have been deliberately added by the manufacturers of more than 100 consumer products over the past two decades.
Plastic microbeads, which are typically less than a millimetre wide and are too small to be filtered by sewage treatment plants, are able to carry deadly toxins into the animals that ingest them, including those in the human food chain such as fish, mussels and crabs, scientists said.
While many people have assiduously tried to recycle their plastic waste, cosmetics companies have at the same time been quietly adding hundreds of cubic metres of plastics such as polyethylene to products that are designed to be washed into waste water systems one estimate suggests that, in the US alone, up to 1,200 cubic metres of microplastic beads are washed down the drains each year.
