Scientist Marcus Eriksen stood ankle deep in the murky Los Angeles River on Friday and dipped a net into the water, looking for a problem. 
 
 Eriksen was searching for "microbeads," bits of plastic no bigger than salt grains that absorb toxins such as motor oil and insecticides as they tumble downstream and into the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 The tiny polyethylene and polypropylene beads are an emerging concern among scientists and environmentalists. The beads come mostly from personal care products such as facial exfoliants and body washes. They are not biodegradable, however, and because they are not removed easily by wastewater treatment plants, they flow out to sea and enter the food chain. 
 
 "Microplastic is now a ubiquitous contaminant in the Pacific Ocean — and seas around the world," said Eriksen, a scientist with the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to researching plastics in the world's waterways. "We believe that 80% of it comes from coastal watersheds like Los Angeles." 
 
 Eriksen is just starting to test the Los Angeles River to determine if it holds microbeads, and if so, their source. On Friday, he found what he was looking for in about 10 minutes. 
 
 Near the confluence of the river and Arroyo Seco, about three miles north of downtown, Eriksen found a handful of algae and wriggling leeches speckled with tiny filaments, shards and beads that could have come from myriad sources: laundry wastewater, degraded plastic bags, stir sticks, personal care products. 
 
 "The scary thing is that the beads sponge up toxins, then get consumed by organisms from shellfish to crabs to fish" later eaten by humans, he said. 
 
 Scientists are only beginning to understand the hazards posed by microplastic pollution in the world's oceans and inland waterways. In 2012, Eriksen and a team of researchers discovered large amounts of microbeads and other microplastic pollution in the Great Lakes. Those findings prompted a coalition of mayors of Great Lakes cities to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine the possible health risks to lake ecosystems and humans. 
 
 A year later, 5 Gyres launched a campaign asking the manufacturers of personal care products to remove plastic microbeads and replace them with nonplastic alternatives such as crushed walnut husks and apricot kernels that will degrade naturally. Several companies have agreed to phase microbeads out of their product lines. 
 
 In a statement, the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies, for example, said it has "stopped developing new products containing polyethylene microbeads." The company expects by 2015 to have replaced microbeads with alternatives in half the products that currently use them. 
 
 That's not soon enough for 5 Gyres, which is circulating a petition titled, "Get plastic off my face and out of my water now!" 
 
 Standing in the river, Eriksen demonstrated the problem. He squeezed several drops of Johnson & Johnson's Clean and Clear facial scrub into a small jar full of water, then shook it up and filtered the foamy mixture through a black T-shirt. 
 
 Left behind on the fabric were hundreds of tiny white, pink and blue plastic beads. "We estimate there are about 330,000 microbeads per tube," he said. 
 
 The source of beads washing down the L.A. River isn't known yet. In rainy weather, the river holds vast amounts of runoff from across the region. But in the current drought, 80% of the flow comes from the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which sits 12 miles upstream from Eriksen's survey site and treats sewage from the homes of 800,000 San Fernando Valley residents. The other 20% is from myriad sources in the area. 
 
 Jimmy Tokeshi, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, suggested it's not coming from the plant, which sends sewage through a series of holding tanks, digesters, filters and sanitizers before discharging the treated water into the river at a rate up to 27 million gallons a day. 
 
 "The city of L.A. meets and/or exceeds all Clean Water Act requirements as well as all local, county and state water regulations," Tokeshi said. Using cloth filters, "We capture microplastics that are larger in size than 10 microns, or 0.01 millimeters, in the water reclamation plant," he said. 
 
 Most of the visible plastic debris Eriksen found was much larger than 10 microns in size. 
 
 Eriksen said he doesn't yet know the origin of the beads. But he said his nets don't lie. 
 
 "Using a net only 2 feet wide for 10 minutes in a stream a few hundred feet across, I caught dozens of bits of plastic," he said. "So, it's easy to extrapolate that millions of plastic particles flow through this channel every day." 
 
 He pivoted to face downstream, and with a wave of his muddy hands, he declared: "That's a problem." 
 
 louis.sahagun@latimes.com ||||| ALBANY – Tiny microbeads used as abrasives in everything from skin care products to toothpaste, which scientists say are polluting Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes, would be banned under legislation being proposed by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. 
 
 Scientists have warned that the plastic pollutants, which has shown up in studies of Lake Erie, can last for centuries. 
 
 Schneiderman called his plan “common-sense legislation” that will reduce the flow of the tiny plastic particles into key waterways of New York. 
 
 It would be the nation’s first such legislation calling for a ban of the particles now used in more than 100 consumer products. 
 
 The Microbead-Free Waters Act would ban the distribution, sale or manufacture in New York of beauty and other personal care products that contain plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size. 
 
 The legislation comes after a group that represents the interests of more than 100 cities in the United States and Canada along the Great Lakes urged federal officials in the two nations to crack down on the use of the tiny plastic particles in consumer products. 
 
 They cited a State University of New York at Fredonia study that found the plastic particles in three Great Lakes, with the highest concentration in Lake Erie. Scientists say there are other non-toxic particles companies can use in their products besides the plastic microbeads, some of which are so small they can only been seen under a microscope. 
 
 Environmental groups say the products get into waterways from the pipes in consumers’ homes are often not caught by public sewage plants and are a threat to drinking water and fish stocks. 
 
 Dave Ullrich, executive director of the Chicago-based Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, which represents 111 Great Lakes cities, including Niagara Falls, said the water in the lakes turns over relatively slowly. 
 
 The water now in Lake Erie takes about five years to totally replace itself with new water, while Lake Superior can take 200 years. As a result, the microbeads his group is trying to get banned tend to accumulate in the Great Lakes more than other waterways. 
 
 “Any action of this nature that can make the right thing happen, namely to prevent new products and getting them out of the system as quickly as possible, is a good thing,’’ Ullrich said in an interview. 
 
 He noted his group has written to the 11 companies that use microbeads and have gotten responses from six of them with varying levels of commitments. Ullrich said other states are considering bans, though he believes New York is the first with actual proposed legislation. 
 
 Schneiderman’s office said three manufacturers – Proctor and Gamble, Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive – have recently agreed to phase out using microbeads in their consumer products. 
 
 They said products containing the terms “polyethylene’’ or “polypropylene” on their ingredient list are those with microbeads. 
 
 email: tprecious@buffnews.com ||||| Right now 86 NGOs from 37 countries are supporting the campaign! Already 446 brands from 117 different manufacturers promised to remove plastic microbeads from their products. To achieve a microbead free environment, we need your support. Any gift will help! ||||| Lawmakers in Albany could make New York the first state to outlaw the tiny plastic beads used in personal care products like facial scrubs and toothpastes. 
 
 Legislation that is scheduled to be introduced on Tuesday by Assemblyman Robert K. Sweeney of Suffolk County on behalf of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman would prohibit the sale of cosmetic and beauty products that contain the beads, which are added to aid exfoliation and abrasion. 
 
 The beads appear in the tens of millions in the Great Lakes, according to scientists’ estimates, with high concentrations along the New York shores of Lake Erie. They become coated with toxins like PCBs and can be eaten by fish and other marine life. Scientists suggest that those toxins could be working their way back up the food chain to humans. 
 
 The beads and other bits of tiny “microplastic” debris slip through wastewater treatment plants and have also been found in the Los Angeles River and in the Pacific Ocean. Antipollution activists argue that limiting the use of cosmetics, which can have hundreds of thousands of beads in a bottle, can help limit the environmental risk.
– New York state lawmakers have set their sights on an unlikely target: facial scrubs. More specifically, the washes, soaps, and toothpastes that contain smaller-than-a-salt-grain plastic beads, which are touted for their exfoliation abilities and derided for what scientists say they're doing to our ecosystem. As the New York Times reports, the beads are a kind of "microplastic" small enough to evade wastewater facility treatment efforts; they've been found in the Great Lakes (which are populated by tens of millions of them, say scientists), the Pacific, and the Los Angeles River; late last month, in fact, the LAT dug into the damage the polyethylene and polypropylene beads are doing. The Buffalo News reports the beads can persist for centuries, and they don't float there innocuously: Marine life will eat the beads, which can become toxin-coated; they may then enter the food chain. Albany lawmakers will today announce a bill that would ban the sale of cosmetic and beauty products made with plastic particles that measure fewer than 5 millimeters; it would be the first state with such a ban. While some manufacturers are taking steps of their own—Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, for instance, are on a path toward doing away with the beads—the policy director behind the plastic-fighting group that is working with the state's politicians says the beads persist in thousands of products, and that trying to go after single manufacturers is "akin to playing Whac-a-Mole." IPhone app Beat the Microbead can alert you to whether a product contains the beads.