How many microbeads is a clean face worth?

Put down that facial scrub and exfoliating body wash.

You may not realize it, but if you use these types of products, you may be releasing as many as 94,500 tiny plastic beads into the environment with every wash.

Experts at the U.K.'s Plymouth University recently decided to figure out just how many microbeads get washed down the drains everyday — and the numbers they found were staggering.

Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at Plymouth, found that a single wash may contain as many as 94,500 microbeads. An entire tube could hold upwards of 2.8 million of them, and once used, they are all destined to make their way into the world's rivers and oceans.

Personal care products that use tiny exfoliators usually contain microbeads, the industry term for the miniscule plastic balls that provide a scrubbing action in everything from toothpastes to body washes. The beads are designed to wash down the drain and take dirt and oils with them. But the problem is that once in the drain, they make their way into waterways and may poison marine animals that mistake them for food.

The beads ranged in size from 0.01mm up to 1mm. "Their size means they can pass through sewage treatment screens and be discharged into rivers and oceans," Thompson told The Sunday Times.

They may also be combined into a sewage sludge, which is sometimes spread onto farmland.