Microfibers Are a Source of Ingestible Plastic Worse Than Already-banned Microbeads

They come out of your fleece every time you do a load of laundry.Microfibers, which are tiny threads of polyester, nylon, acrylic and other synthetic textiles, were first discovered by ecologist Mark Browne in 2011. Researchers have been finding them in waterways around the world ever since.Texas is no exception. In 2015, researchers at Baylor University sampled sunfish in the Brazos River and found that 45 percent had microplastics in their guts. Baylor Ph.D. candidate Colleen Peters was the lead author of the study and said the team was surprised to find that 96 percent of the plastics in the sunfish were microfibers.Microfibers are close cousins to microbeads, the tiny particles put in beauty products to give them a "scrubbing" effect. The beads are subject to the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which banned production sale of microbeads.  Continue reading...