Louise Knott Ahern

lkahern@lsj.com

Environmentalists say the microbeads are a danger to fish

Products containing the word "polyethylene" likely have microbeads

Tiny%2C plastic beads from personal care products are filling up the Great Lakes

Do you wash your face every night? Brush your teeth?

Of course you do. But your nightly beauty routine might be adding to plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, and environmentalists are ramping up efforts to try to get you to change the products you use.

Some of the top Great Lakes scientists, researchers and activists gathered in Grand Rapids last week for the 10th Great Lakes Restoration Conference. One of the main topics of the conference every year is pollution and how to fix it.

But this year's focus was even smaller: the discovery two years ago that the Great Lakes are full of tiny, plastic microbeads from personal care products like facial cleansers.

Researchers can't say how many of them are floating in the Great Lakes, but there are enough to cause concern for their potential impact on fish, other marine life and the lakes' overall ecosystems.

To help you understand the issue, we talked to experts to highlight what you need to know about the problem — and how you can help fix it.

How they were discovered

Starting two years ago, researchers with an organization called the 5 Gyres Institute began sailing the Great Lakes with a giant trawl to measure plastic pollution.

Researchers expected to find the same kind of plastics that are found in the world's oceans — broken chunks of boats and recreational gear, debris from fishing vessels, water and soda bottles, and other basic garbage.

Instead, researchers discovered that much of the plastic pollution in the five Great Lakes is tiny — so-called microplastics. They're defined as synthetic debris smaller than 5 millimeters in dimension, said Olga Lyandres, research manager at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Among those microplastics collected, more than 20 percent were tiny, synthetic spheres. The microbeads were nearly invisible to the naked eye and have now been traced to things like exfoliating facial scrubs and toothpastes, Lyandres said.

How many are in the lakes?

The number of microplastics in each lake varies.

Lake Ontario has the most, with up to 1 million plastic particles per square kilometer, Lyandres said. Lake Erie has the second-largest concentration with up to a half-million plastic particles per square kilometer.

Lyandres said the different levels are due to a lot of factors -- including the level of development along each shoreline and even weather patterns.

How they get into the Great Lakes

Microplastics in general get into the water in a variety of ways. But the microbeads in particular are coming directly from our sinks and tubs.

They're so small they literally slip through the filters at waste water treatment plants and get washed into the lakes, said Melissa Duhaime, a researcher at the University of Michigan.

The 5 Gyres Institute estimates that a single tube of facial cleanser can contain 330,000 microbeads.

These plastic beads are not biodegradable, so every time you wash your face or brush your teeth with one of these products, you are potentially adding more microbeads to the Great Lakes that will never dissolve, Duhaime said.

Why they are harmful

Scientists need to do a lot more research on the affects of microbeads and microplastics, Duhaime said. Researchers do know it's not a good thing because fish are eating them.

One of the greatest threats to marine life is what Duhaime calls the "energy cost" of eating plastic.

"If you are eating plastic, you won't grow as big as if you are eating a nutritious diet," she said. "You can imagine this will have implications on the food web, and potentially fishery profits. Researchers have also found that the plastics can pass through the different levels of the food web. If a mussel ingests plastics and a crab ingests the mussel, you will find the plastics in the crab's body."

Whether that plastic makes its way up the food chain remains unclear.

"What we don't yet know is the risk this poses for humans that eat these contaminated fish as food sources themselves," she said.





What policymakers are doing

Lawmakers in nearly every Great Lakes shoreline state are considering legislation banning the manufacture and sale of products with plastic microbeads.

Illinois became the first state to pass such a ban earlier this year. It was signed into law in June by Gov. Pat Quinn. The law prohibits the manufacture of products with microbeads by the end of 2017 and requires stores to stop selling them by the end of 2019.

Michigan has a similar bill pending. It was introduced by Rep. Terry Brown (D-Pigeon) last year but has not yet been brought up for a hearing in committee.

Brown's bill — House Bill 4994 — would require faster action by manufacturers and retailers than the Illinois law. If passed, it would prohibit manufacturers from intentionally adding plastic microbeads after January 2015 and retailers from selling those products after January 2016.

Some companies that produce these kinds of products aren't waiting for laws to stop making the products. Several, including Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, The Body Shop and L'Oreal, have voluntarily committed to stop using microbeads, according to the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

What you can do

Stop using these products, said Jamie Cross of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

"Even with the banning of these products, it's up to our behavior and what we purchase to reduce the number of microbeads in the lakes," she said.

Not sure if your product contains microbeads? Check the label. If you see the word "polyethylene" in the list of ingredients, it likely has microbeads.

Does your facial cleanser contain microbeads?

Not sure if your product contains microbeads? Check the label. If you see the word "polyethylene" in the list of ingredients, it likely has microbeads.

You can also download an app from 5 Gyres called Beat the Microbead. You can use it to scan the barcode of personal care products to see if it has microbeads.

Or you can check out a list of products at BeattheMicrobead.org.

Take care of our beaches

Join thousands of volunteers this weekend for the annual Great Lakes Adopt-a-Beach shoreline clean-up.

Every year, the Alliance for the Great Lakes organizes beach clean-ups in six of the Great Lakes states -- Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Volunteers remove trash and help collect data on what they find.

When: Sept. 20, 2014, 9 a.m. to noon

How: Register online at www.greatlakesadopt.org to take part in the cleanup. Individuals and groups are welcome.

For more information: visit www.greatlakes.org or email Michigan's coordinator, Jamie Cross, at jcross@greatlakes.org