Microbeads: tiny objects, massive problem https://bit.ly/2bPAQji

The late Dr John Ugelstad was a hero of Norwegian science. “Why go to space when you can go to Trondheim,” Newsweek crowed on a visit to his labs in the 80s. It had come to photograph him in the company of a few of the millions of tiny particles – microbeads – he had invented. Prior to Ugelstad, it had been assumed that the only way to make tiny plastic polymers spherical was to do it in the weightlessness of space – the ones made on Earth had come out as useless droopy plastic soufflés. But Ugelstad had found a way, and the results were revolutionary.

In medicine, they allowed the separation of bodily substances to make testing much easier, especially for Aids. And in cancer, his “paramagnetic” (magnetic only in a magnetic field) microbeads allowed new treatments that would pile into bone cancer patients’ bones and “scrub out” the old cancerous cells.

In cosmetics, though, his work has recently met with mixed reviews. This week, parliament’s environmental audit committee called for a worldwide ban on cosmetic microbeads, found in everything from facewash to toothpaste to shampoo. And the scientific and political consensus has reached a tipping point. The US instituted a ban late last year, Canada did so in June, while the Dutch were on it back in 2014.

The evidence on microbeads has existed for almost a decade. A landmark study on North America’s Great Lakes in 2012 used specially designed nets to drag the surface, finding tiny polymer spheres everywhere.

There are 100,000 in the average face wash, and estimates once put the number swirling down US plugholes every day at 808tn. Most end up in the sludge pile at the waste-water plant and are packed off for fertiliser. But 1% remain in solution – 8tn beads a day. These then become snacks for microscopic plankton; soon enough the big fish eat the little ones, the beads start showing up in the stomachs of larger fish, and, in the Great Lakes study, also in fish-eating birds such as the double-crested cormorant.

Ugelstad was about to go down in history alongside the guy who invented asbestos and the bloke who put lead in petrol, but action by corporations seems to be turning the tide. In 2012, Unilever said it would stop using them, L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble have set timetables, while Boots ceased with its own brands in 2014. Some have simply deleted the ingredient (look for “polyethylene” or “polypropylene” on the pack). Others have instead turned to ground-up peach-pits, oatmeal or sea salt.

Rest assured, if you want to continue to sandpaper excess dermis off your face, to ritually grind your way back through gnarled exoskeleton back to the young you you know must be hiding in there somewhere, you still can. Just so long as you also respect the rights of the double-crested cormorant.

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