Hauppauge, NY - November 5th, 2015 - Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker joined County Executive Steve Bellone, Legislators Kara Hahn and William Spencer, Citizens Campaign for the Environment Executive Director Adrienne Esposito, and Pete Scully from the Suffolk County Water Authority on Monday, October 26^th, at the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge to sign into law legislation prohibiting the sale of personal care products containing microbeads.

“What you don’t see can hurt you – microbeads pose a threat to our environment and our health”, said Legislator Anker. “I applaud the efforts of my colleagues and have proudly co-sponsored this bill, which will provide significant progress toward protecting our waterways, environment, and health.”

Microbeads are small particles of plastic that have been added to personal care such as face wash and toothpaste. Microbeads, hardly visible to the naked eye, cannot by filtered by wastewater treatment plants, and thus flow from our bathroom drains into bodies of water. With many bodies of water already being compromised by microbeads, this legislation is an important step that will help protect Long Island’s precious bodies of water and aquifers.

The law makes Suffolk County the largest county in New York to ban microbeads. The legislation institutes a local phase-out beginning January 2018 for personal care products not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and January 2019 for ones that are.

For more information, please contact the office of Legislator Anker at (631) 854-1600.