Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-NY, wants to ban microbeads used in personal care products, which she says hurt fish and birds along the St. Lawrence River and other water bodies.

Sen. Gillibrand is rallying support for the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, bipartisan legislation she introduced to federally ban cosmetics containing synthetic plastic microbeads.

Plastic microbeads are found in personal care products like facial scrubs, body washes, hand cleansers, and toothpaste, she says. These products are designed to be rinsed down the drain, but the microbeads are too small to be captured by wastewater treatment plants.

Sen. Gillibrand says the beads have been found in large bodies of water across New York State, where they concentrate toxins and can be ingested by birds and fish, posing serious environmental and health risks.

An April 2015 report released by Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office found that microbeads were present in 74 percent of water samples taken from 34 municipal and private treatment plants across New York State.

She says Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) data shows that Clinton, Franklin and Essex Counties predominantly rely on 28 wastewater treatment plants of different sizes and capabilities.

Water collected from two of these plants, both in Essex County, were found to contain microbeads in the State Attorney General’s 2015 report. Several of these plants like most plants throughout all of New York do not employ advanced treatment that would effectively remove microbeads.

This means when the residents of New York unknowingly wash approximately 19 tons of microbeads down the drain every year, most of the plastic microbeads are entering plants that are not equipped to stop them from being discharged into Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence River, and other surrounding waters.