This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: While talks on an international plastics treaty remain deadlocked, California is starting a process that could lead to microplastics regulation. On Oct. 1, the state will add microplastics to a list of substances that evidence suggests may be harmful to people or the environment and are candidates for increased regulation.
A recent Stanford University–led paper traces California's approach to microplastics regulation over the past decade and draws lessons for other states and countries looking to regulate a synthetic material found in our water, food and bodies. The paper was published in Frontiers in Environmental Science. Below, paper co-authors Amelia Meyer, Kara Meister and Sarina Patel explain what can be learned from the state's decade-long regulatory experiment.
Meyer is an environmental scientist who co-leads Stanford's Plastics and Health Working Group, which focuses on the health and policy dimensions of microplastic pollution. Meister is a pediatric otolaryngologist and head-and-neck surgeon whose lab at the Stanford School of Medicine has documented microplastics in children's tonsil tissue and is developing new methods to measure microplastic burden in the body. Patel is a policy program manager at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and a former California Legislature science fellow who works to connect Stanford research with state policymakers.
Listing microplastics in the Candidate Chemicals List doesn't mean a product is restricted in any way. It's the procedural step California's Department of Toxic Substances Control takes before it can designate specific products for regulation. The process still requires public comment and formal review.
"While microplastics have been measured in the environment for a while, there hasn't been a coherent way, legally, to treat them as pollution that needs to be mitigated," Patel said. "Classifying microplastics as a chemical of concern opens an important legal door." In 2015, California banned microbeads in wash-off cosmetics like facial scrubs because the tiny plastic pieces can slip through wastewater treatment systems and accumulate in waterways. It was a relatively straightforward law, according to Meyer, because microbeads "were intentionally manufactured, had a clear source, the same general shape and texture, and were largely nonessential." Today's biggest microplastic sources, such as tire dust and clothing fibers, are harder to address.
When particles shed continuously from millions of cars and washing machines, interventions must go beyond manufacturing. California has been chipping away at the issue with an expanding body of regulations. Microplastics have been found in human blood, organs and other bodily fluids.
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