Harmful enough that Unilever, one of the largest manufacturers of soap products, vowed to stop using these beads by 2015.
The microbeads are actually microplastic. Instead of dissolving, they are washed down the drain and make their way to bodies of water.
There, they can lodge themselves in the tissue of marine invertebrates. They've been found to stay in muscles for as long as 48 hours.
These microbeads also soak up harmful chemicals in the water. If marine animals then ingest the beads, they would also be ingesting the chemicals.
These plastics do not degrade on their own and hence will only keep piling up unless more manufacturers, like Unilever, take a stand against using them. You can find another way to exfoliate.
