ecology
june 2015
BY morgan bibee
Toxic Toothpaste
sources
News.vice.com
8
I never questioned why my toothpaste had microbeads in it.
But before I get into that, let’s back up. What is a microbead? Microbead, not microbot (shout out to all the Big Hero 6 fans). A microbead is a tiny ball of plastic (microplastics) typically composed of polyethylene. They’re fairly common in cosmetics like: face wash (where they are used for exfoliation), or toothpaste (where they actually don’t serve any purpose other than aesthetics).
The major problem with microbeads lies in their composition. In essence, they’re plastic. As many people are aware, plastic has - for decades now - been accumulating and damaging our environment. Normally, the first environmentally-detrimental plastic products that come to mind are: plastic bags. Microbeads just seemed too small to have any impact on the environment that could approach the damages resulting from plastic bag utilization. While this may be true, microbeads hold their own scale of devastation.
image sources
Yahoo
Cagle Cartoons