Microbeads In Cosmetics End Up In the Great Lakes

Reader Contribution by Kathy Knauer
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Exfoliating scrubs promise to wash away dead cells, leaving younger, more vibrant looking skin.  But there’s a catch — the ingredient that many cosmetic companies use, tiny plastic beads, are a part of the microplastics that researchers find in the oceans and now, a new study reveals, in the Great Lakes.

A research group, 5Gyres, teamed up with Sherri Mason, a researcher at State University of New York at Fredonia in one of the first studies of microplastics in freshwater. And the news isn’t good.  Microplastics were found in the Great Lakes in large concentrations. As The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple reported:

“About 60% of the microplastics we found were these perfectly round, spherical balls.  And those definitely don’t come from the degradation of larger plastic items,” said Mason.

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