The Actors in the Microbead Debate
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, by and large, 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 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 what 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 bases of all claims being made by activist groups. With out the proof that these scientist are providing - that microbeads are in fact harmful - the activists arguments would essentially be nullified. 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 key word "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 - however, since beginning my research into this topic the law has since been removed from the website without reason. It is hard to make and speculation why the would have done this and it may simply be for technical purposes.My original plan was to list the stages and then the individuals that voted for and against this bill and their contribution to making this bill become law and subsequently the banning of microbeads. If this information once again becomes available I will depict it in a spread sheet as I have the news outlets and activist groups.
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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 compliingin 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 manufactures profits, hopefully ceasing the production of microbeads.
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- Microbeads Aimee, Dawn, Jacqueline, and Zac
