If you are a person who cares about hygiene, you may have noticed little beads in exfoliating facial scrubs and toothpaste. What you may not know is that these microbeads are actually balls of plastic that are smaller than five millimeters in diameter. They were designed to be easily flushed down the drain. However, because water treatment plants were not built to filter them out, microbeads are polluting rivers, oceans, and lakes in a serious yet not immediately obvious way. According to a study that was published in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology in 2015, eight trillion microbeads were released into aquatic habitats daily in the US alone. Since then, this estimate has continued to rise, contributing to the ever-growing global microplastic problem. Microbeads aren't biodegradable, which is bad news for both marine life and humans. The microbeads function as sponges and end up attracting dangerous chemicals like pesticides. Some animals, such as fish, cannot distinguish the beads from good and wind up eating them. In turn, these same animals are then eaten by humans. As a result, these beads radically impact human health as they move from being chemicals in water to being part of the food chain. What's worse is that because of their size, they are incredibly difficult to clean up. Using them has put us on a surefire path to harming the planet's wildlife and water quality. "Beat the Microbead" is an international campaign initiated in 2012 by the Plastic Soup Foundation to raise the general public's awareness about the environmental impact of microbeads. It has pressured cosmetic companies to phase out the use of beads. It has even released an app that allows people to scan the barcodes of products to see whether they contain microbeads. Identifying the complex names in an ingredients list can be difficult for consumers. However, the best solution at hand is to ban the use of microbeads outright and figure out a way to clean our oceans. Another way is to adopt natural alternatives that are non-toxic and biodegradable to replace microbeads. Researchers of the study concluded, "The probability of risk from microbead pollution is high, while the solution to this problem is simple."