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US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads
- bhouston 11y agoEasy solution, just switch to natural biodegradable abrasives like crushed walnut shells. These are already used a lot in the cosmetics industry.
- idbehold 11y agoThat sounds slightly more expensive than plastic.
- ceejayoz 11y agoWhy would walnut shells be expensive?
- malkia 11y agoInterresting. Would that affect people allergic to them (there would be alternatives so it's probably not a big deal). I'm just pointing out another issue that someone else might bring later (whether it really is harmful I don't know).
- rdancer 11y agoPeople can be allergic to soap ingredients already. The packaging will list it.
- pzone 11y agoYes, first thing I thought of was Lava soap, which uses ground pumice stone.
- dubyah 11y agoShells & pits have sharper edges though. Jojoba beads are a better replacement for microbeads from a performance standpoint because their rounded edges provide a gentler exfoliation. They are, however, considerably more expensive than ground shells or pits because they aren't an agricultural byproduct.
- beachstartup 11y agoi use a kiehl's product with ground apricot pits. feels great on my skin. very gritty and satisfying without harming anything. living in the city, my face is coated all sorts of pollutants, oil, and dry flakey skin after a full day in winter. getting rid of all that shit in the evening shower feels amazing.
- randycupertino 11y agoDo you know what product it is specifically? I'm looking for a new face cleaner after finding out the one I loved does have microbeads. Thanks.
- beachstartup 11y agohttp://www.kiehls.com/facial-fuel-energizing-scrub/615.html?dwvar_615_size=5.0%20fl.%20oz.%20Tube&cgid=men-cleansers-pre-shave#start=2&cgid=men-cleansers-pre-shave http://www.kiehls.com/facial-fuel-energizing-scrub/615.html?... it's not cheap but a little bit goes a long way. i use pea-sized amount.
- randycupertino 11y agoThanks! Just ordered it :)
- krschultz 11y agoThis was an obviously bad idea from the start. One of the tenants of a reasonably modern mechanical engineering curriculum is at least passing coverage of 'product lifecycle', which basically means thinking about disposal/recycling during design. What did the CPG companies think was going to happen when they dumped a billion tiny little pieces of plastic directly down the drain?
- mhurron 11y ago> What did the CPG companies think was going to happen when they dumped a billion tiny little pieces of plastic directly down the drain? They clearly thought it wasn't their problem.
- Zikes 11y agoAs much debate as I've heard recently over what qualifies a person as an "engineer", one of the key features has always been a very strict adherence to a code of ethics. I'm starting to wonder if the title is even worth arguing over anymore.
- pjc50 11y agoIn a highly competitive job market, it's hard to have ethics that result in your unemployment. And any actual "whistleblowing" that costs businesses money can be career-destroying, life-ruining, or (in the case of Snowden) force you to flee the country. Look at how nobody's broken omerta on what actually happened in VW.
- cpncrunch 11y agoWould the people designing these products even be engineers?
- the8472 11y agoThe low-level employees can act ethically and still design unethical solutions: - development cooks up 20 different solutions, some of them containing plastic microbeads - plastic microbeads work better than no additive - plastic microbeads have the same performance as <alternative> - report concludes: "we clearly should pick <alternative>, due to similar performance and lower pollution" - management massages report: "we clearly should pick plasic microbeads since it performs equal to <alternative> and is cheaper"
- bhartzer 11y agoI am happy that small, but fairly substantive (and meaningful) policies like this still manage to get through Congress. And that not everything becomes like that "feds are confiscating our light bulbs" fight because of posturing or corruption. This is a good regulation/law, and it's actually going to be passed. Glad it still happens sometimes.
- ksenzee 11y agoNot all the opposition to the light bulbs regulation was corruption and posturing. Some of it was quite reasonable objections from consumers along the lines of "hey, I buy that product, and there's no good substitute at a reasonable price point." I doubt consumers really care that much about microbeads, which makes them a lot easier to ban.
- cballard 11y agoYeah, CFL bulbs are icky blue flickering garbage, and the LED bulbs I've used (Hue), while otherwise fine, don't support my dimmer correctly. Using the Hue app isn't as easy as walking over to the light switch, and they won't work anyways, unless I rip out the dimmer - I ended up putting the Hue bulbs in the bathroom, which is at least fun for a joke. Incandescent bulbs are just a better experience for me right now. I don't think there are any such advantages for microbeads.
- dbloom 11y agoThere are LED bulbs on the market that have great compatibility with all dimmers. I hope that market forces eventually weed out all of the less compatible LED bulbs. At that point, LED bulbs should be truly interchangeable with incandescents for lighting (heat generation, not so much).
- simcop2387 11y agoI've got a few of the good ones for dimmers, I have however had a problem with them still. They're too efficient, all of the dimmers I have don't got low enough to be able to actually get them dark at the low end. They're all still fairly bright and I've already gone to bulbs rated at half of what I had originally. I think it's just something that's going to take a bit to actually catch up properly.
- xixi77 11y agoJust curious -- what is the main problem with these (as opposed to say sand and other natural objects of similar size) -- do they float in water instead of settling down, or look like food, or something else?
- sageabilly 11y agoThey're super small and don't get caught up in wastewater treatment filters so then they enter into local watersheds. There, they get ingested by the critters at the bottom of the foodchain and enter into the foodchain that way.
- smsm42 11y agoSo what is the difference with, say, very fine sand/dust? Density? E.g. do the same critters ingest fine sand - and if so, why plastic is more harmful? Also, if these microbeads are chemically inert, what is the harm from them entering the foodchain - as opposed, again, to e.g. dust?
- DanBC 11y agoSand and dust tends to settle, where as these microbeads form a "soup". The beads absorb some chemicals, and so they're not inert by the time they're eaten.
- Houshalter 11y agoDo they decay in UV light? I know most plastic will tend to break down over time if left outside.
- nulltype 11y agoIt sounds like they can cause issues for marine life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_particle_water_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_particle_water_polluti... such as just physically choking them or leaching chemicals. It may be a good idea to not run the experiment of "what happens when we coat marine life with a lot of plastic beads" because it could be really expensive to clean up if we find out it's bad later on.
- merpnderp 11y agoForget about these beads winding up in streams and our ecosystem, which is bad enough. Dentists warn that toothpastes with these beads can embed them in your gums leading to infections and tooth decay. No idea how this became legal. Our regulatory body should be a whole lot more about transparency, so questionable stuff like this can be easily weighed by the consumer. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/09/18/why-dentists-are-speaking-out-about-the-plastic-beads-in-your-toothpaste/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/0...
- relaytheurgency 11y agoBecause things are made illegal, not the other way around.
- necessity 11y agoFortunately.
- Retric 11y agoDepends, medical drugs are default illegal. Though the crap that is ok to put in the food supply is ridiculous. http://sagewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Renew-Download-9115.pdf http://sagewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Renew-Downlo...
- merpnderp 11y agoI always assumed toothpaste was regulated by the FDA.
- buckbova 11y agoWhat about pumice soaps, don't these particles float as well? Probably too abrasive to have widespread use outside of some hand soaps.
- coryrc 11y agoThey aren't a polymer. Nature is well-adapted to having small bits of rock in the watershed.
- logfromblammo 11y agoTechnically speaking, I think pumice is a type of glass, and silicates are actually inorganic polymers (...-Si-O-Si-O-Si-O-...). The problem is that microbeads are new to the ecosystem, and no species larger than a bacterium has yet adapted to suddenly having a lot of anthropogenic plastic particulates around.
- adrusi 11y agoGreat, but now what do I do when my hands are covered in tree sap and normal soap isn't working? I guess we'll just have to settle for a more environmentally friendly alternative like acetone.
- jonknee 11y agoWe were able to clean ourselves well before microbeads were added to soaps and we'll continue to be able to clean ourselves afterwards.
- tomjen3 11y ago>We were able to survive infections well before we had penicillin and we will continue to survive infections well afterwards. I am not saying that you are wrong, just that your argument can apply to literally every inventions humans have made, ie it proves too much.
- jdmichal 11y agoThere's plenty of less-environmentally-problematic abrasives to use. Nothing is wrong with something like pumice. A lot of them are even plant-based, like coconut or walnut shells.
- mrob 11y agoI can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Acetone is more environmentally friendly because unlike microbeads it is broken down into harmless substances by microbes and sunlight. The drawback is it's more damaging to your skin.
- SwellJoe 11y agoWhile it's cool and all that this has been done, it's many years after credible people started warning about the dangers of these products. The fact that manufacturers kept making this stuff with knowledge of the damage it was causing is pretty damning, and is the kind of thing that makes me mistrustful of arguments that the free market will sort things like this out. There's just no good mechanism to stop massive harm to common resources (even now, we don't have a good mechanism to stop this kind of thing, since it took years to do so, even for something as uncontroversial as this...our system barely even puts a dent in the ecological harm of fossil fuels, animal agriculture, etc.).
- pvnick 11y agoI'm a big free-market guy, but I agree that sometimes there are items which need regulation to prevent massive environmental damage. CFCs are the classic example, since they were eating a hole in the ozone layer.
- markdown 11y agoCFC's, leaded fuel, cigarettes...
- 7952 11y agoA lot of these products feel mildly deceptive. When I buy a face cream I should not have to worry that it may be killing sea creatures. If that unexpected harm in unavoidable they should have to be honest about it and put it on the label.
- lincoln84 11y agoThis is why Native Deodorant (www.nativecos.com) uses 10 simple ingredients that are entirely natural.
- fahim305 11y agoI actually used Native because it was legitimately natural, not the "natural" claim that Unilever/P&G make but still pack it with chemicals that shouldn't be in my body. Would also like other recommendations for other bathroom products that are truly natural
- brokentone 11y agoThere are a number of natural "beads" regularly used in alternative products. Likely a higher pricepoint, but clearly a better idea. e.g. http://www.kiehls.com/mens-oil-eliminator-deep-cleansing-exfoliating-face-wash/515.html http://www.kiehls.com/mens-oil-eliminator-deep-cleansing-exf...
- jackcosgrove 11y agoNot only are these environmentally harmful, but they get stuck in your ear after you shower with them and then your doctor has to refer you to an ENT costing time and money to vacuum them out. Not to mention the psychological stress when your doctor tells you you have a blue growth in your ear and they don't know what it is. Or so I've heard this sort of thing can happen...
- castratikron 11y agoMicrobeads were banned in Minnesota several months ago. http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/05/microbeads http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/05/microbeads
- sosuke 11y agoWhy 2017? That seems very far off.
- kileywm 11y agoI've used some of the products containing microbeads and was flabbergasted when I learned that they were plastic. It was my dentist who asked a pointed question during a routine cleaning: "Do you use Crest toothpaste?" I answered yes and was informed that some of the plastic beads from the tooth paste had gotten stuck in my gums. The dentist went on to explain that she'd sent in many complaints to the company but they still didn't drop that ingredient. What weighs on my mind now is why a toothpaste company continued to use microbeads after learning of the externality. Did they have too much inventory to sell. Were they afraid that discontinuing that exact product would upset customers? Did they think that owning up to the mistake and correcting it would draw too much attention to the mistake? Personally, my respect lies with any entity that can own up to and correct its mistakes before it is forced to do so.
- aaron695 11y agoAnyone who cares about science rather than religion want to link about issues with microbeads here? Can't say I've ever seen any, other than the normal anti-science, stuff is 'scary' point. That alone annoys me with this conversation, how about starting with a real reason this is bad rather than we can track it.
- donatj 11y agoWhat's wrong with pumice soap that we need plastic?
- azinman2 11y agoFINALLY How people aren't able to be put in jail for this kind of idiotic stuff in the first place I'll never understand. Our priorities in our legal system don't really accommodate the destruction that can be caused by normal everyday products at scale.
- wiradikusuma 11y agoHoly batman, I didnt know (certain type of) microbeads are made of plastic. Everybody knows plastic in general is non-biodegradable etc etc, and they're making it in small particles? Who in their right mind? What I don't understand is, they get the profit, everyone else clean their shit. And they can get away with this? Sigh