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• 1 2016-02-11T14:16:39-08:00 The Actors in the Microbead Debate 46 plain 2016-04-03T13:52:04-07:00 I divided the actors of the microbead debate into four main categories: News Outlets, Activist Groups, Scientists, and Government Offices, and companies using microbeads in their products. From these categories, I further deconstructed each group by detailing the actors within each group. 
  
  To yield the above information I conducted an advanced Google search with key words "microbeads" and "California", and then focused my results to exclusively news articles, taking the first two pages of results. I then made note of the news articles covering the microbead debate happening in California, where they were located and how they contributed to the debate. It seemed that all articles were depicting the new legislation in California as a victory and there seemed to be very little opposition.
  
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  Next, I highlighted the most prevalent activist groups appearing in both my google news search and regular google searches of the term "microbeads". These groups aim to inform the general population on the harmful environmental impacts of microbead pollution and possible harms to humans from contaminated seafood. They tend to back their claims by science, but provide little information surrounding the economical impacts that the banning of microbeads would inherently have. They use text and videos to outline the dangers of microbead pollution. They are possibly the most influential and passionate advocates for the banning of microbeads.
  
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  The four figures above outline which scientists are making major contributions to microbead research, what discipline the majority of research falls within, and the universities and countries that are most concerned with microbead research. Scientists are the basis of all claims being made by activist groups. Without the proof that these scientist are providing - that microbeads are in fact harmful - the activist's arguments would essentially be nullified. The term microbeads is used synonymously with the term "microplastics" in academia - and there is a large degree of agreeance that microplastics are known to accumulate toxins from their environment and are small enough to be ingested by marine biota - where they can bioaccumulate. I have stuck with the term microbeads in scientific literature because this is a unique term surrounding what is used in the personal hygiene industry and to keep consistency with my google searches and crawls.  The majority of research is in the biochemistry field and is concerned with how the microbeads interact with toxins, and what properties of the microbeads make them toxic and harmful to the biology of living organisms. This information was retrieved by searching the keyword "microbeads" in Scopus and adjusting the filter for article titles, abstracts and key words. I then retrieved the cvs file for my over 4000 results and used a tool called Science Scape to depict the search results visually and in such a way that the viewer can see what scientists, fields, and universities are involved.
  
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  As mentioned in the introduction to microbeads, the Government of California has recently passed a law to ban the sale of microbeads within their state - This is law AB 888. This law was made publicly available and one could see the various stages and government officials that voted for and against this law. One can see in the images provided, the various stages that are involved in the implementation of new laws - from the initial motion from Richard Bloom to the passing of the law by Gov. Jerry Brown.
  
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  The final players in the microbead debate are the companies using microbeads in their products. This is a massive list of companies and nearly every company with some sort of product claiming to exfoliate or scrub, likely contains microbeads. The key ingredients to look for when purchasing a product thought to contain microbeads are polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate, and polymethyl methacrylate. If these are listed on a companies product, then they are using microbeads. If a company is to ban microbeads it will take time and money to phase the beads out of production and source out other alternatives, this can be troublesome for companies and there may be some opposition. However, many companies are complying to new regulations and listening to scientists and activists groups and stopping the use of microbeads in their products. A list of companies that have banned microbeads in their products can be found here​ at Beat the Bead's website. In saying this, I believe the real problem in this debate starts at the industries producing and manufacturing microbeads and selling them to cosmetic companies. If the production is stopped at the source, it would have a profound impact on the microbead problem, but banning the sale of products containing microbeads will definitely put a dent in manufacturers profits, hopefully ceasing the production of microbeads.