How would you react if mid-bite through a fresh piece of sushi, you happened to swallow a polyethylene bead, which you mistook for a colorful bursting speck of fish eggs? Although it’s unlikely that a polyethylene bead – also called microbead – will end up on top of your eel roll, New York state legislators and activists are working to see that microbeads never get near your body again. Microbeads are the tiny, colored spheres in cleansers and exfoliants that skincare companies promised would deliver moisturizing benefits and complexion-enhancing vitamins and oils. These seemingly precious additions to skincare products will soon be rolling down the drain, and this time for good, with a mandatory ban on microbeads, which is scheduled to take effect in December 2015.

Not only are microbeads slipping through and polluting water filtration systems, they also act as absorbents for other chemicals present in the water, causing toxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls to slowly move into our diets. There is limited research on how harmful the effects of microbeads are, however legislators and activists alike aren’t willing to wait to find out.

5 Gyre, an organization dedicated to decreasing plastic pollution worldwide, reported that two samples of tested water from New York’s Lake Erie produced troubling statistics on plastic pollution and risk of poison by toxins. In the water, 600,000 microbeads per square kilometer were detected, with some samples containing 350,000 microbeads in one bottle alone.

“Since launching our public awareness and corporate facing campaign, the overwhelming reaction from our community is shock and anger,” 5 Gyres policy director Stiv Wilson said in a study conducted by the organization. “People simply don’t like washing their face with plastic, and the fact that it is designed to go straight into the environment makes microbeads a particularly egregious source of plastic pollution.”

The legal muscles of New York are on board due to concern for the state of the Great Lakes. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, introduced the Microbead-Free Waters Act, which will soon make the future of microbeads obsolete. The act bans beauty companies from using microbeads, however 5 Gyres plans to push for further action, hoping to discontinue the sale of microbeads as a whole.

Katheryn Erickson, assistant editor at Town&Country Magazine, weighed in on the matter, noting that she visit the website beatthemicrobead.org to check for chemicals in skin care products to avoid using polyethylele terephthalate (PET), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) or nylon. Although the ban promotes environmental awareness, purchasing beauty products may require additional research and trial and error. Erickson adds that natural exfoliants don’t host the same benefits as the perfectly spherical microbeads.

Buy there are still ways to exfoliate and nourish your skin efficiently. Amna Anwar, a beauty and style writer at Examiner.com, offers plenty of alternatives.

“Oats, seeds, sea salts and sugar blended in a mixture of natural oils derived from plants or fruits can provide stellar results,” she says.

If you prefer a pretty package, Anwar suggests Goldfaden MD’s “Doctor’s Scrub,” with ingredients like crushed ruby crystals, seaweed and organic tea extracts, which she believes works better than any microbead product on the market.

Big name companies such as Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson have all agreed to begin cutting down the use of microbeads, eventually discontinuing their usage completely by the December 2015 deadline. Smaller companies such as locally-based apothecary Malin+Goetz have quickly jumped on a plan. Andrew Goetz, co-founder of Malin+Goetz, confirmed that the company’s popular Jojoba Face Scrub exfoliant has already been re-formulated using EcoScrub beads that completely disintegrate, and will be available to purchase starting in May.

The risk of consuming chemicals through fish and marine plants is expected to be drastically lower once microbeads are phased out of beauty and skin care products. The state of New York has taken this issue to task to make sure that the Department of Environmental Protection’s claim to “world-renowned quality” water will remain true.