Usually plastic kills fish in a variety of ways when it enters the water environment. However, microbeads can be incorporated into the food the fish are eating. It is a concern the plastics could break down in the fish stomach and become part of their meat. That is the concern, if that is the fact, then humans are eating the same plastic they washed themselves with, plus they washed thorough sewage treatment, too. The microbeads would be hollow and can pick up microscopic bacteria.
October 31, 2015
Editorial
...The tiny plastic bits (click here) flush through most water treatment systems and eventually make their way into freshwater streams and lakes, including the Great Lakes. Mason and her students began trawling the lakes in 2012, skimming the tiny bits of floating plastic from the water in an attempt to quantify the problem.
She found concentrations in Lake Michigan of about 17,000 pieces per square kilometer — the highest concentrations were captured in Grand Traverse Bay — and concentrations of up to 1.1 million pieces per square kilometer in lakes Erie and Ontario. Department of Environmental Quality officials have voiced concerns about those plastics eventually moving up the food chain to humans when fish and other aquatic organisms eat them. Only a minuscule number of states — including Illinois and California — have passed laws to ban microbeads in household products, but Michigan isn’t one of them.
Both Democrat and Republican state lawmakers have introduced bills since 2013 to stop the flow of microbeads — many the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen — into the state’s waterways, but none has gained momentum. The latest bill halted in early October when state representatives disagreed about whether a law should include an allowance for manufacturers to use biodegradeable plastic beads in their products.
That inaction, particularly for residents of the Grand Traverse region, should be concerning since we live in the state that certaily has the most profound interest in the lakes. Lawmakers need to work together to pass legislation taht will hault the flow of microbeads into the Great Lakes,...
