Dang It - Another Thing To Feel Guilty About

I wash zillions of these beads down the sink every year. And just when my conscience was clearing up:

That's because the exfoliating ingredient in Olay's body wash, and in most similar big-brand products (such as Dove Gentle Exfoliating Foaming Facial Cleanser and Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser), is actually made out of plastic: tiny particles of polyethylene that scrub the dirt from your face and then wash straight down the drain and into watersheds and, eventually, oceans.

It's well-known by now that increasing amounts of plastic are clogging the planet's seas, killing millions of sea creatures every year when they swallow it, choke on it, or get tangled in it and drown. Plastic doesn't biodegrade, meaning it doesn't break down into its initial components; every piece of plastic ever made is probably still around somewhere on the planet today. But sunlight disintegrates plastic into smaller pieces of plastic. These can wind up in waterways like rivers and creeks, flowing out to sea.

..."As this debris occupies the same size range as sand grains and planktonic organisms, it is available to a wide range of invertebrates near the base of the food chain," says Mark Browne, a scientist at the Centre for Ecological Impacts of Coastal Cities at the University of Sydney who has studied the consequences of microscopic plastic in marine habitats. And unlike other types of plastic that just happen to end up in the ocean, these beads are almost predestined to reach the sea.

The amount of "microplastic"—fragments smaller than 1 millimeter—in the oceans has "increased significantly" over the last few decades, according to Browne, who found that 85 percent of the plastic debris in one British estuary was micro. Browne believes that one reason more people haven't heard about the problem is simply that it's difficult to study. "Quantifying tiny plastic fragments in the animal tissues presents a number of methodological challenges," he says.