Experts Call for an Immediate Ban on Magic Sponges for Household Cleaning (jasondeegan.com)

Better source: https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2024/june/melamine-s...

This is not surprising. Always found it mindblowing how a product that sheds microplastic in order to function is allowed to exist.

Is there a legal or regulatory limit in the US on the amount of microplastics that can be shed from a product during use?

We need a measurement for which devices are shedding the most microplastics.

This is disgusting, but not surprising. Unfortunately consumers can’t know what harms these products have. We don’t require that type of testing or transparency.

I used these frequently during an old job, it was always concerning how the sponge slowly disappeared as you scrubbed with it

We need a significant rethink in how new materials are released into the world. The current process where a business can just release something new and it goes through little in the way of real safety testing can't continue. As we build ever more exotic materials the potential for catastrophic and rapid danger is high. We have destroyed and disrupted our habitat too much already we need to stop doing this. We seriously need to stop producing microplastic and clean up what we have unleashed on the world quickly.

This feels like banning plastic straws. It's an action that will create disproportional anger compared to the benefit.