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Incheon
Zenith Foreign
the 8th Language
High School
The kernel of death: Microbeads

Plastic, called the miracle of the 20th century, is light and infrangible, so
its usage all over the world has been increasing tremendously. Today, it
is used to make
things from
everyday items
to high-tech de-
vices. It is hard to
find any place where plastic is not used. How-
ever, the danger of microbeads -the plastic par-
ticles that are under 0.5mm in diameter-is
getting worldwide attention.
These days we can see microbeads every-
where in our daily life. Some personal care prod-
ucts such as facial scrubs and toothpastes, in
particular, have a huge amount of microbeads in
them. They are so tiny that they are not
screened out at the sewage treatment plant. Ac-
cording to Greenpeace, 8 million tons of micro-
plastic is dumped into the ocean every year, and
51 trillion pieces of micro-plastics are floating in
the ocean. To make matters worse, microbeads are made of polyethylene which is harmless in itself.
How, it doesn’t decompose or dissolve and, as time passes, it absorbs toxins and becomes harmful.
Many aquatic organisms confuse these harmful beads with their food and eat them. Then toxins stack
in the bodies of bigger fish when they eat these polluted fish. In the end, human beings eat them. It

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