Our oceans are choking with plastic, reducing vast parts of the seas to toxic gyres of swirling trash that will last for thousands of years. Now, personal product conglomerates like Johnson & Johnson and others have unleashed “microbeads” -- tiny shards of plastic used as exfoliants in beauty products -- designed to be washed down the drain where they flow right past clean-up systems out to sea. These plastic pellets chemically attract and absorb toxins in the sewage, and are often mistaken for food by fish that gobble them up, allowing the pellets -- and the toxins along for the ride -- to work their way up the food chain. Many microbeads are so tiny that they show up in the bloodstreams of the animals that eat them, where theyll be lodged in the host until it dies. Tell Johnson & Johnson to remove microbeads from its products now! Microbeads are being dumped into our oceans in huge quantities: Neutrogena’s “Deep Clean” facial cleanser contains over 350,000 microbeads in each tube alone.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 18:38:04 +0000