A bill banning the manufacture and sale of personal care products with synthetic plastic microbeads achieved final Senate approval on Wednesday, but not without a science lesson from one of the bill’s opponents.

House Bill 15-1144 sailed through its Senate committee hearing and final passage without amendment but not without challenge.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, brought a microscope to the Capitol on Wednesday to argue that the problem has been blown “way out of proportion.” During his third-reading comments, Lundberg told senators that the only study of the problem, done on the Great Lakes two years ago, showed no more than 43,000 microbeads per kilometer. Lundberg analyzed the numbers and came up with a figure of one microbead per 100,000 liters of water.

“This is much ado about nothing,” Lundberg said. “These beads are harmless…benign,” he said, calling the legislation an “affront to private commerce.”

But the best-known study on microbeads, conducted by the 5 Gyres Institute and reported in Marine Pollution Bulletin in 2013, found more than 1.1 million beads per kilometer in Lake Ontario and a low concentration of 17,000 microbeads per kilometer in Lake Michigan. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dianne Primavera, D-Broomfield, has said that the legislation was proposed by Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest personal care products companies, in order to level the playing field for manufacturers. (The company has pledged to remove plastic microbeads from its products, as have a number of other multinational companies.)

The bill would ban the production, manufacture and sale of personal care products containing synthetic plastic microbeads smaller than 5 millimeters in diameter, phased in over two years starting on January 1, 2018. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment would assess violations, with financial penalties – ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 — assessed by the district court where the violation took place.

Microbeads are used as exfoliants in body wash, facial scrubs, toothpaste and other personal care products. The 5 Gyres study, as well as one conducted in Denver by KMGH-TV7 last year, found the beads are too small to be caught by filters in wastewater treatment plants. The beads then can be eaten by fish, which mistake them for fish eggs, or choke plant life and contaminate water.

Sen. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, sponsored the bill in the Senate, where it passed on a 21-14 vote Wednesday. Since it was not amended in its trip through the Senate, it now goes to the governor for signing.

“If you don’t put microbeads in the water, you don’t have to worry about taking them out!” Todd said. “This is a real victory for clean water, our wildlife and our precious environment.”

While microbeads have only recently garnered attention in Colorado, next month’s state Science and Engineering Fair, held at Colorado State University, includes a project by a K-12 student, in what organizers say is the first student experiment of its kind conducted in the state.

Kelsey Brethauer, 13, of Windsor Charter Academy, designed a process to take water samples and then filter and inspect them for microbeads. She sampled water from east of Kersey to west of Fort Collins, hypothesizing that there would be higher concentrations of microbeads near urban areas. Brethauer’s project, which proved the hypothesis, won awards at the Longs Peak Regional Science and Engineering Fair earlier this month.

— Marianne@coloradostatesman.com