BEWARE THE MICROBEAD MENACE STILL LURKING IN YOUR HOME...

THANKS to the Daily Mail microbeads campaign, launched in 2016, the Government-enforced manufacturing ban of products containing microbeads has finally come into effect. As of last month, companies can no longer use microbeads in ‘wash-off’ beauty and personal care products such as exfoliating scrubs, shower gels and toothpaste in the UK.

UK cosmetic manufacturers have been working on a voluntary plan to remove the beads since 2015. Boots and Unilever phased out microbeads in their products in 2015, while Colgate-Palmolive removed them in 2014.

A ban on the actual sale of products containing microbeads is set to follow in July. In the meantime, be vigilant for products which contain these microscopic specks of plastic, as they will still be on the shelves.

Microbeads are one of the most pernicious examples of plastic product design. Bad product design, that is. The tiny pieces of synthetic plastic are used as colour additives, scrubbing agents and abrasive exfoliants in a variety of personal care products: everything from toothpaste, facial scrubs and body washes to soaps and shaving foams.

Try squeezing a product containing microbeads into a glass of water, stir to disperse it and then pour that water slowly through a white T-shirt. All the little coloured particles you see are plastic microbeads.

When conducting this experiment with a facial scrub use a black T-shirt, as most of the microbeads in scrubs tend to be clear or white. They will show up as little white

articles on the shirt. These minute beads of astic are generally less than a millimetre in ze — about the size of a grain of sand — and re designed by the product manufacturers wash straight down your drain. That’s a problem for several reasons. The microbead particles are generally too mall to be caught by conventional municipal ewage treatment facilities, so they waltz rough filtration systems and head straight to our rivers, lakes and, ultimately, oceans. According to Greenpeace, one tube of face ash can contain up to 360,000 of these plastic heres. That means that once we have finished washing our faces or brushing our teeth, we unwittingly release thousands of pieces of plastic into the environment, where they go on to ‘gently exfoliate’ the digestive tracts of seabirds and even enter the food chain.

Plastic microbeads act like little sponges, soaking up toxic chemicals that might be in the water (such as petroleum products, radioactive waste and ‘persistent pollutants’ that never break down). Researchers estimate that, as a consequence, a single microplastic particle in the ocean can be a million times more toxic than the water around it.

Microbeads also resemble tiny eggs or morsels of food so are gobbled up by fish and birds. They then leach toxic chemicals into the animal’s muscle and fat, which ends up in food on our dinner plates. Eating fish could mean ingesting a toxic smorgasbord.

Plastic microbeads are essentially a cheap filler for beauty products: their popularity has swelled in recent years as they are less expensive and not quite as abrasive as environmentally friendly natural alternatives.

Check you don’t have any in your bathroom (the word ‘polyethylene’ on the ingredients list is a sure sign) and, if you do, stop using them. Greenpeace recommends sending any products containing microbeads back to the maker for them to handle responsibly.

Replace them with products that boast natural alternative ingredients such as sea salt, ground coffee, coconut husks, apricot shells, walnut shells, crushed cocoa beans, seaweed and orange rind. Or better still, see the box above to learn how to make them yourself...