Microbead

Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension. They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. They are used in exfoliating personal care products, toothpastes and in biomedical and health-science research. Microbeads can cause plastic particle water pollution and pose an environmental hazard for aquatic animals in freshwater and ocean water. In the US, the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 phases out microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics by July 2017. Several other countries have also banned microbeads from rinse-off cosmetics, including Canada, France, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension when they are first created, and are typically created using material such as polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), nylon (PA), polypropylene (PP) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). The most frequently used materials are polyethylene or other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. Microbeads are commercially available in particle sizes from to . Low melting temperature and fast phase transitions make them especially suitable for creating porous structures in ceramics and other materials. The parameters for what qualifies as a microbead change subtly based on location and the corresponding legal jurisdiction; minor distinctions in the definition may be encountered from one country to another. For example, America's official definition for a microbead, as per the Microbead-Free Waters Act 2015 laid out by Congress, is "any solid plastic particle less than 5 millimeters in size that was created with the intention of being used to exfoliate or cleanse the human body." On the other hand, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), the governmental agency responsible for Canada's microbead ban, settled on a definition which includes only plastics with diameters between 0.