A consumer alert tonight on something the NewsChannel 5 investigators have been digging into for months. And it’s something that's probably in your bathroom right now.
A new study has scientists calling for a ban on microbeads.
They're those little beads that are in your soaps and toothpastes. A NewsChannel 5 investigation revealed that they don't dissolve when they go down the drain.
They end up in the great lakes and the fish then eat them. And we then ingest the chemicals when we eat the fish.
The new study found that up to 8 trillion of those microbeads wind up in United States waters every day.
Those behind the study say cleaning the beads out of the water isn't an effective solution and microbeads should be taken out of products altogether.
An app called "Beat the Microbead," which can be downloaded on Apple mobile devices, can help determine if their are microbeads in your products.
According to ecowatch.com the app, developed by North Sea Foundation and the Plastic Soup Foundation, allows consumers to scan the barcode of their products and it will alert them if there are microbeads in the product.
To learn more about the app, visit ecowatch.com.
