Polluting Textiles

The Problem with Microfibres

Judith S. Weis, Francesca De Falco, Mariacristina Cocca

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000587579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

This book examines the critical issue of environmental pollutants produced by the textiles industry.

Comprised of contributions from environmental scientists and materials and textiles scientists, this edited volume addresses the environmental impact of microplastics, with a particular focus on microfibres released by textiles into marine and freshwater environments. The chapters in Part I offer environmental perspectives focusing on the measurement of microplastics in the environment, their ingestion by small plankton and larger filter feeders, the effects of consuming microplastics, and the role of microplastics as a vector for transferring toxic contaminants in food webs. Written by environmental and material scientists, the chapters in Part II present potential solutions to the problem of microplastics released from textiles, discussing parameters of influence, water treatment, degradation in aquatic environments, textile end-of-life management, textile manufacturing and laundry, and possible policy measures. This is a much needed volume which brings together in one place environmental research with technical solutions in order to provide a cohesive and practical approach to mitigating and preventing environmental pollution from the textiles industry going forward.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental conservation and management, environmental pollution and environmental chemistry and toxicology, sustainability, as well as students and scholars of material and textiles science, textile engineering and sustainable manufacturing.

1 INTRODUCTION TO TEXTILE POLLUTION

Judith S. Weis, Mariacristina Cocca and Francesca De Falco

DOI: 10.4324/9781003165385-1

Microplastics (MPs) are pieces of plastic ranging from 5 mm in size down to microscopic. They include different polymers, such as polyethylene, polystyrene, etc., and come in a variety of shapes, such as fragments, spheres, and fibres. There has been a virtual explosion of research on microplastics – where they are found, how organisms interact with them, and effects they may have on the organisms. Early studies focused on marine habitats where they were first found, but they have been found and studied in freshwater and terrestrial environments as well.

Environmental sampling

The number of MPs found in water samples depends on the collecting methods. Some studies use plankton nets to collect them, although it has been well documented that long thin fibers tend to go through the pores of nets and are greatly undercounted. Rocha-Santos and Duarte (2015) evaluated sampling methods and found that nets show microfibres (microplastic fibres, MFs, <5 mm) to be much less abundant than in whole water samples. Green et al. (2018) reported that plankton nets may underestimate concentrations of MFs by three to four orders of magnitude compared to grab (whole water) methods. A meta-analysis (Burns and Boxall 2018) found average sample proportions in the water column were 52% MFs, 29% fragments, with other shapes including beads/spherules, films, foams, and others making up only a small proportion. Constant et al. (2019) indicated that MFs were the most common shape in beached MPs as well. Personal care products, a source of spherical microbeads, received considerable attention years ago, but currently account for a very small percent of MPs in the ocean. MFs originate primarily from clothing via wastewater from washing machines (Browne et al. 2011). It is estimated that a single laundry wash releases approximately 121,465 acrylic, 82,672 polyester, and 22,992 poly-cotton microfibers (www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/19/17800654/clothes-plastic-pollution-polyester-washingmachine). Chemical analysis methods such as GC-MS (Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), Raman Spectroscopy, or Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy can determine the proportions of different plastic polymers.

Less attention has been paid to occurrence of MPs in the air, but in urban air they are predominantly MFs from synthetic textiles (Liu et al. 2019). A major source of airborne MFs is release from clothes dryers (Kapp and Miller 2020). Since MPs differ in chemical composition, size, shape, color, density, and effects on biota, they should be regarded as a suite of contaminants, somewhat comparable to metal pollutants, and samples should be characterized that way (Rochman et al. 2019). MFs from clothing, the most abundant type of MP in water (e.g. polyester and acrylic), tend to sink rather than float (Taylor et al. 2016); all MPs found in deep-sea organisms were MF.

Uptake

Ingestion has been reported in marine mammals, birds, fishes, macroinvertebrates and plankton. Most of the plastics found inside animals in the field are MFs, which may reflect their relative abundance in the environment, and/or potentially that they are not eliminated (egested) as readily as other shapes (Murray and Cowie 2011). Botterell et al. (2019) reviewed data on consumption of MPs by marine zooplankton and found 39 species that ingested them, most of which had been studied in the laboratory. They noted the importance of physical differences (size, shape, type, age) of MPs in determining ingestion and recommend that future research should use MP types representative of what is in the environment and in comparable concentrations. It is important to note that surface-dwelling organisms are more likely to encounter polystyrene, polypropylene, and polyethylene which are less dense than seawater and float, and that animals living deeper are more likely to encounter denser polyethylene terephalate and polyvinyl chloride (Cole et al. 2013). Most MPs found in animals’ digestive systems are MFs and fragments (Mohsen et al. 2019). Spheres may be more likely to pass through easily and rapidly, while fragments with sharp edges are more likely to damage tissues, and fibres are more likely to form tangles and clog up the digestive system. Mussels and other filter-feeding bivalves reject undesirable particles during or right after capture by means of pseudofeces which are egested before being swallowed. In experimental studies, 71% of MFs in mussels were found in pseudofeces (Woods et al. 2018) and another 10% were found in feces after passing through the digestive system.

Transfer to other tissues and through the food web (trophic transfer)

It is important to study to what degree MPs can move out of the digestive system into other tissues rather than being egested. Anchovies, Engraulis encrasicolus, collected from the field had MPs, primarily polyethylene, in their livers (Collard et al. 2017). There are relatively few laboratory observations of MPs moving out from the digestive tract into tissues. Crabs exposed to 0.5 mm spheres showed translocation to the hemolymph, gills, and ovary (Farrell and Nelson 2013)

Most laboratory studies of trophic transfer used microspheres (MSs), despite the fact that they are scarce in the environment. In the laboratory, copepods (Eurytemora affinis) and polychaete larvae (Marenzellaria sp) ingested fluorescent polystyrene MSs and later passed them on to mysids which consumed them (Woods et al. 2018). Blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, took up green fluorescent polystyrene MSs before being fed to shore crabs (Carcinus maenas). Particles were subsequently detected in the hemolymph, stomach, hepatopancreas, ovary, and gills of the crabs (Farrell and Nelson 2013). Brown mussels (Perna perna) were fed polyvinylchloride (PVC) MSs and then fed to the fish Spheroides greelyi, and to crabs, Callinectes ornatus (Santana et al. 2017). The plastics were transferred to the predators. Thus, transfer up the food web has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but in some studies, prey organisms were fed only MPs and then were fed to predators prior to egestion; then MPs were measured in the predators prior to any egestion. This is an unrealistic experimental design.

Effects

The degree and type of effects that MPs produce depends on polymer type, size, shape, concentration, exposure time, and adsorbed chemicals. Because of aggregation and biofouling, MPs on the bottom may exceed the number in the water column and pose a greater risk to benthic fauna. However, most of the studies of effects have focused on pelagic organisms (Haegerbaeumer et al. 2019). Many studies find effects at concentrations far above environmental levels. In most studies, clean MSs are used, rather than fibers or weathered fragments. In amphipods, ingested MPs can block the digestive tract and reduce the amount of food they can eat (Au et al. 2015). MFs were more damaging than other shapes, possibly because they stay in the gut longer. Jovanovic (2017) found that MF ingestion by small fish can block the digestive system, interfere with feeding, and change behavior. While that study used MFs, many other studies use sizes, shapes, and/or concentration of MPs very different from those in the environment. In a study that used environmentally relevant levels of polyethylene MPs, Bour et al. (2018) found changes in energy reserves in the clam, Ennucula tenuis, exposed to the largest particles (125–500 μm). When MSs and MFs were compared for toxicity to Daphnids, MFs were more damaging (Ziajahromi et al. 2017).

Effects from plastic-associated chemicals

Two types of chemicals are of concern: (1) those in the plastic, including the polymer itself and additives like phthalates, pigments, or BPA (bisphenol A), and (2) environmental contaminants that adsorb onto the plastic, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), metals, etc., which can be toxic, carcinogenic, or mutagenic. Since MPs attract environmental chemicals, it is possible that they act as a vector to transfer pollutants to organisms. Leachate from raw resin pellets used for making plastic products affected behaviour of periwinkle snails (Seuront 2018), but the snails responded differently to virgin vs beached pellets. It is likely that the virgin plastic leached out additives, while the beached older plastic leached out adsorbed chemicals. In contrast, no toxicity was observed for extracts of virgin MPs on embryos of the medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) (Pannetier et al. 2019), while extracts of MPs coated with benzo [a] pyrene induced lethal effects with embryo mortality, low hatching rate, and DNA damage. Wardrop et al. (2016) indicated that ingested MSs can transfer adsorbed PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) to the rainbow fish (Melanotaenia fluviatilis). Beckingham and Ghosh (2017) demonstrated uptake of PCBs from MPs in benthic worms, but uptake was much greater from sediments than from MPs, and the presence of MPs in the sediments reduced the transfer of the chemicals from MPs to the worms. In the laboratory, Batel et al. (2016) found that benzo [a] pyrene was transferred from MPs to Artemia nauplii, and from them to zebrafish, via trophic transfer. Most studies did not use MFs. Some chemicals may be more tightly bound to MPs of a certain shape and chemistry; how quickly they can be desorbed is a critical issue. Since some animals complete egestion relatively quickly, it is important to learn whether the plastic is in the gut long enough for significant desorption. Species with longer, more convoluted digestive tracts are likely to retain MPs longer and desorb more. The chemistry of the digestive tract could also be important. Bakir et al. (2014) found that acidic conditions promote desorption, but Bakir et al. (2016) modelled the transfer of adsorbed organic contaminants to an invertebrate, a fish, and a seabird, and determined that intake from food and water was the principal route of exposure to toxicants, with negligible input from MPs.

Quantification of MFs from textile

The washing process of textiles is identified as one of the major sources of MF pollution. In 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that the washing of synthetic textiles caused 35% of global emissions of primary MPs to the world oceans (Boucher and Friot 2017). Another recent report calculated that MPs generated from the washing of synthetic clothing are in the range of 18,430–46,175 tonnes per year, only in Europe (Eunomia 2018). Since 2016, several works have tried to evaluate the quantity of MFs that textiles may release during a washing cycle (Napper and Thompson 2016; Carney Almroth et al. 2018; De Falco et al. 2019). Each work applied a different methodology, ranging from tests in real washing machines (Hartline et al. 2016; Pirc et al. 2016; Belzagui et al. 2019) to laboratory simulations of washing processes (Hernandez et al. 2017; De Falco et al. 2018; Kelly et al. 2019). The type of textiles tested is varied: standard or ad hoc manufactured textiles (De Falco et al. 2018; Carney Almroth et al. 2018), new commercial garments (De Falco et al. 2019; Belzagui et al. 2019), or soiled consumer wash loads (Lant et al. 2020; Galvão et al. 2020). Moreover, the filtration and evaluation processes of the MFs in the washing water also differ among the studies in terms of volume of water filtered, filter pore size, quantification of the MFs released by number, or by weight. Some of these studies also investigated the influence on the release of factors like detergent (i.e. De Falco et al. 2018), washing program (i.e. Kelly et al. 2019), and textile characteristics (i.e. Carney Almroth et al. 2018). Due to the major differences in the methodologies applied across the different works, it is difficult to compare their results and draw general conclusions. Therefore, there is a strong need for development of a uniform methodology/protocol to assess MF ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to textile pollution
• Part 1 Environmental problems
• Part 2 Textile solutions
• Index