With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have been suffering from irritated skin and ‘maskne’ (acne induced by prolonged mask wearing). Over the past few years, skincare has gotten increasingly popular and a major makeup trend has always been and continues to be well… clear skin. With this new wave of skincare trend, a significant number of products have been produced and created over the years to match demand. Unsurprisingly, not all of these products are good for the environment. In the next two posts, I will be discussing how common skincare products can contribute to environmental pollution. Today’s focus is microbeads! But just what are microbeads?
Microbeads were first introduced into market in 1972 and has been used in countless self-care and skincare products (Dodds, 2020). Microbeads are essentially tiny bits of polyethylene plastic, about 0.5 to 500 micrometres in diameter (Dodds, 2020). A visualisation of this is shown below, obtained from a recent study on microbeads in Macao (Bashir et al., 2021).
They are primarily used as a physical exfoliant, gently scrubbing off dead skin. In Macao, personal care and cosmetic products containing microbeads are still widely available for sale in the region, with over 70% of surveyed products containing at least one type of microbeads as an ingredient, with polyethylene being the most common one (Bashir et al., 2021). While microbeads can be made out of organic materials like apricot seeds, plastics are the most common ingredient given their low production cost (Dodds, 2020; Bashir et al., 2021). Hence, one of the primary sources of environmental microplastics is personal care and cosmetic products containing microbeads (Bashir et al., 2021).
With this understanding, we can see how microbeads can be a major source of water pollution give that these products are designed to be washed down the drain. While researching for this post, I came across this infographic from 5 Gyres that clearly illustrates how microbeads can lead to water pollution.
From the infographic, we can see that microbeads are too small to be captured in many sewage management facilities around the world. As a result, they enter water bodies and eventually ecosystems. The issue with microbeads is not only how it ends up polluting ecosystems and its propensity to enter food chains. Microbeads, like other forms of microplastics attract other pollutants in the environment. For example, if they’re exposed to persistent organic pollutants like flame retardants which are carcinogenic, they will absorb the toxic chemical. In fact, a single plastic microbead has the capacity to be one million times more toxic than the water around it. This effect does not only affect a specific water body. All water bodies in the world are affected by microplastic pollution, with microbeads being a significant source of it.
On top of polluting waters, microbeads and other microplastics have the tendency to cause coastal pollution. In Macao, the density of microplastics in coastal sediments varied between 259 and 1,743 items/L of sediment, amongst the highest reported in the world (Bashir et al., 2021). Marine contamination by microplastics will rise within the coming decades due to a linear increase in the production and use of plastics worldwide (Bashir et al., 2021). The skincare trend is hence complicit in participating in this pollution. Hence, there is a need for urgent actions in order to curb the predicted increase in marine pollution by microplastics.
5 Gyres. (n.d.). Plastic Microbeads. The 5 Gyres Institute. Retrieved from https://www.5gyres.org/microbeads.
Bashir, S. M., Kimiko, S., Mak, C. W., Fang, J. K. H. and Gonçalves, D. (2021). ‘Personal Care and Cosmetic Products as a Potential Source of Environmental Contamination by Microplastics in a Densely Populated Asian City’. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, DOI:10.3389/fmars.2021.683482.
Dodds, D. (2020). How Makeup Pollution Endangers the Ocean. Wave Tribe Retrieved from https://www.wavetribe.com/blogs/eco/how-makeup-pollution-endangers-the-ocean.