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Thursday, December 10, 2015

Why microbeads were banned in Illinois, and in why they should be in general.

The first state in the US to ban microbeads is Illinois back in June 2014, and this was done so for a variety of reasons. More specifically, the production, the manufacture, and the distribution of cosmetic products that contains microbeads was banned, and the punishment would be a $2500-5000 fine each day that the provision is violated, and comes into effect December 31 2017, as well as a ban on the purchase of microbead products that will be in effect December 31 2018, and a ban on medications containing microbeads on December 31 2019.

Many of the reasons that were used referenced various scientific articles and reports with evidence and statements showing the damage that microbeads will do to  the ecosystem. Microbeads themselves are not filtered out of sewage and therefore end up directly in the marine environment where they can cause significant harm to the fish and other sea life living in that environment. Microbeads themselves either do not decompose or decompose very slowly, including the ones described as biodegradable, and end up causing persistent damage.

While this has led to changes that were made by some corporations such as Unilever who supposedly replaced all their micro-plastic exfoliating products by 1 January 2015, there is still a fair bit of work before this can be achieved on a greater scale.

http://time.com/2917462/why-illinois-banned-microbeads/

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=2727&GAID=12&GA=98&DocTypeID=SB&LegID=78471&SessionID=85&SpecSess=



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