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The words “gridlock” and “Congress” have become predictable neighbors in many a sentence about the federal government. A bill to protect the environment was introduced in the House in March. In early December, the House passed the bill. A week later, the Senate passed it as well, without changing a word and by unanimous consent, just before Congress left town on Friday. That is the strangely charmed life of the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which sailed through Congress in an age when most legislation plods. The new law bans tiny beads of plastic that have been commonly added as abrasives to beauty and health products like exfoliating facial scrubs and toothpaste. Under the law, companies will have to stop using beads in their products by July 2017. The problem with the beads, as researchers have discovered, is that they slip through wastewater treatment systems and into waterways. Sherri A. Mason, an environmental chemist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, estimates that 11 billion microbeads are released into the nation’s waterways each day. Dr. Mason, whose work on microbeads in the Great Lakes helped bring attention to the problem in the United States, called passage of the bill “a very important step,” The beads themselves are not considered toxic. But once they and other microplastic debris are in the water, they attract harmful chemicals like PCBs, which adhere to their surface and become concentrated there. The plastics are then consumed by marine life; research has suggested that the harmful chemicals can be passed along the food chain to any animal — including humans — that eats seafood. The original sponsor of the bill, Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said its rapid success surprised him, especially the unanimous consent from the Senate. But the explanation, he said, was simple: “There was a lot of support, and there wasn’t much opposition.” The cosmetics industry has been under fire from environmental activists for years over the use of the beads, and all of the major companies had already announced initiatives to phase them out, noted Sean Moore, an official of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association in Washington. Several states, including Illinois and California, recently passed bead bans, and more than half of the states were considering them. In New York, where a ban is before the Legislature, individual counties had instituted bans. Some of them would require products to be reformulated or taken off store shelves by February, deadlines “that were, frankly, not feasible for companies to meet,” Mr. Moore said. The growing number of state and local laws, with conflicting restrictions and timelines, motivated industry to support the law, said Marc Brumer, a spokesman for Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand. Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York. was a sponsor of the bill in the Senate with Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and others. “They had concerns about a patchwork of state regulations,” Mr. Brumer said. Mr. Moore of the health care products group agreed: “We were glad to see one uniform policy across the country.” While environmental groups cheered the passage of the bill, those who concern themselves with the broader problem of plastic debris in the oceans said there was much more do be done. Microbeads are only part of the more than eight million metric tons of plastics that make their way into the world’s oceans each year, including nylon fishing nets, bottles and tiny fibers released from clothes during laundering. Different initiatives will be needed to address those problems, said Marcus Eriksen, a co-founder and the director of research for 5 Gyres, a group that focuses on getting plastic out of the world’s oceans. Microbeads, he added, were “low-hanging fruit,” but a culture that prizes single-use, throwaway items and packaging must change. A version of this article appears in print on December 23, 2015, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Ban on Microbeads Proves Easy to Pass Through Pipeline . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
