Mussels, lobsters and oysters: microplastic pollution finds way into 170 different types of Hong Kong seafood
Greenpeace notes that rates of tiny bits of plastic waste found in particular along Hong Kong’s western shores are among the highest in the world
Exfoliation can be a gratifying cosmetic experience, lathering the skin with tiny plastic beads to remove dead cells, but one green group is calling for a ban on them because of the environmental and health risk.
Found in products ranging from facial scrubs to toothpastes, microbeads are small enough to be washed down drains and flushed into the ocean, where they can end up in the digestive tracts of fish and other marine creatures that humans eat.
According to Greenpeace’s analysis of 58 international academic studies, microplastic pollutants, including microbeads, have been found in around 170 types of commonly consumed seafood including mussels, lobsters, oysters and fish such as bluefin tuna and grey mullet.
“Microbeads cannot be completely filtered out by [preliminary] wastewater treatment,” senior campaigner Kate Lin Pui-yin said. “Once in the ocean, they do not decompose easily ... and before you know it, they end up in our dinner.”
A Baptist University survey, commissioned by Greenpeace, also revealed a lack of public awareness. Around 85 per cent of 804 adults polled did not know certain products contained plastic microbeads. Two-thirds did not know they could pollute the sea.
Lin urged the government to legislate a ban on the sale of products containing microbeads, as the United States did last year.