The recent push to ban microbeads in beauty products was jump-started by a discovery in the Great Lakes in 2012. Almost four years later, this newfound information has turned into a national movement. A movement that's been shrugged off, perhaps because how harmful can something so tiny really be, anyway?Well, this initiative has since transformed into a bill and was just blessed with President Obama's signature earlier this week. And while you might've skimmed over the information before, you should probably get privy, because the new law will change the way you wash your face — for the better.Let's start with the basics: What are microbeads, exactly?They're the tiny, spherical particles (smaller than 1 millimeter, about the size of a pinhead)made of plastic that have made a home in many beauty products you use every day: exfoliants, body scrubs, even toothpaste. They seem innocent enough at first glance, but they're actually wreaking havoc on our environment. Once they're washed down your drain upon rinsing, they make their way into the water system. Since they're too small to be captured by wastewater facilities (and don't biodegrade quickly when washed down drains), they then end up in our lakes, rivers, and oceans.As The New York Times points out, this result is akin to grinding up plastic water bottles and throwing them into these bodies of water — but worse because of what dwells in the waters: fish. They often eat these particles, mistaking them for eggs. (A recent study noted that one quarter of fish found at California fish markets had ingested plastic.) And these creatures often end up on our plates for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. "Why this is such a problem is that we know that plastic in the ocean and in the waters attracts chemicals ," explains Anna Cummins, executive director and cofounder of 5Gyres , a nonprofit organization at the forefront of the Ban the Bead! project. "Plastic is also made with chemicals, and those chemicals dip into the tissues of organisms that eat those plastic particles and then work their way up the food chain." A.k.a. to us.

The Washington Post reported last year that the tiny beads in some toothpastes were not only damaging our insides, the environment, and the creatures that dwell in our waterways, but are also causing serious dental hygiene issues. Michael Apa , DDS,confirms this concern. "Over time [they] can cause problems both with their abrasion when used with a sonic toothbrush against enamel, and [I've] heard of patients getting those micro scrubbers lodged in their gums, which can lead to gum irritation and site-specific bone loss, if not properly removed," he explains.The presence of plastic has been a long-standing issue on the list of environmental concerns (I clearly recall yelling at my mom for not snipping the plastic portion of soda six-packs back in the day, because the poor dolphins!), so why did it take so long for people to take notice?The quick answer is, nobody knew this was happening (and, if you look at the comments on this Atlantic article from two years ago, not many consumers even knew these exfoliants were made of plastic). Yes, there was an article Slate published back in 2008 surfacing the concerns, and there were some papers in the '90s and early '00s on the topic, according to Cummins, but few people knew the extent of the damage. "We've done 50,000 miles of ocean sampling around the world, and we don't ever examine the micro-plastic particles, because you just can't tell where they came from," explains Cummins. "Most of the plastics that we found in our samples are broken-down products, and they're irregular in size and shape, and there's no way to tell what country it came from, or even what product."