#microfibers

Excerpt from this story from Treehugger:

In 2016 Mojca Zupan visited a special exhibit on microplastic fibers in her hometown of Ljubljana, Slovenia. It ended up changing the course of her professional life. After learning about the severity of the pollution problem, Zupan left her job as a corporate lawyer to found PlanetCare, a company that produces a reusable microfiber filter for household use.

Microfibers are tiny plastic particles that range in size from 1 nanometer to 5 millimeters. When a garment is laundered, the churning and vibration of the washing machine, combined with the friction from other clothes, causes fibers to dislodge from the fabric and enter the wash water. While this happens to all material types, whether natural or synthetic, it's the synthetic microfibers that are of greatest concern, as they're essentially made from non-biodegradable plastic. It's estimated that an average-sized 13-pound (6-kg) load of laundry releases 700,000 microfibers.

The microfiber-filled water moves from the washing machine into the household wastewater stream and, even though it may pass through a treatment facility, most microfibers cannot filtered out at that stage; even if they are, wastewater treatment facilities generate sludge that farmers will often collect to spread on agricultural fields, thus speeding up the proliferation of microfibers in the natural environment. Meanwhile, it's estimated that 35% of all microplastics in the oceans originated in washing machines.

Did you ever notice how your favorite clothes lose their color and seem flimsier with time? Washing may be to blame. A new study has shown just how much the time and temperature of a wash cycle can affect clothing.

It found that clothes lose less dye and fewer fibers when washed in shorter cycles and in cool water. That means they will fade and thin less. These wash settings are greener, too — as in better for the environment.

As clothes swish around in a washing machine, some of the fabric’s fibers loosen and wash away. Clothes also lose some of the dyes that had colored them. We may not notice a difference right away. But over time, clothes can turn dull. Fabrics can thin. The dyes and fibers lost in the wash water will end up in the environment.

“There is some sort of environmental impact to almost everything you do,” says Lucy Cotton in England. She is the study’s lead author. She worked on the project as a grad student at the University of Leeds. Her research team put together two batches of clothes to launder in tests. One had dark-colored t-shirts. The other had shirts in vibrant, lighter colors. Each load had various cotton and polyester fabrics. Their dyes and fibers were typical of the mix of clothes laundered at home.

The team also included in each wash load 18 swatches of white t-shirt fabric. Those white fabrics can absorb dyes lost in the wash from colored fabrics.  

The team washed each type of load in the same machine. They used two different cycles. The “cold express” wash lasted 30 minutes and used 25° Celsius (77° Fahrenheit) water. The “cotton short” cycle used 40 °C (104 °F) water and ran for 85 minutes. After each cycle, the team collected fibers in the wash water and from an extra empty wash cycle afterward. (That extra cycle rinsed any leftover fibers out of the machine.) The team repeated the wash cycles and extra empty rinses 16 times for each load and cycle. The group then let the clothes air-dry for a full day.

So, while scientists think the synthetic fibers shed from apparel are an environmental threat, they know that chemicals long used in apparel manufacturing are. That might cast those tiny fibers in a rather benign light, but that’s not what scientists I’ve interviewed think.

“The Cora Ball was designed as an equal opportunity fiber catcher, helping you protect our public waterways from a host of potentially harmful materials and chemicals,” reads the crowdfunding page. 

“In the US, our clothes are 60% plastic. The rest may be made from natural materials, but they are often covered in dyes, heavy metals and other chemicals. 

So, it makes sense to catch all of this manmade material before it ends up throughout the marine ecosystem, in the bellies of fish, and ultimately, on our plates."

Are We Eating Our Fleece Jackets? Microfibers Are Migrating Into Field And Food

The innovation of synthetic fleece has allowed many outdoor enthusiasts to hike with warmth and comfort. But what many of these fleece-wearing nature lovers don't know is that each wash of their jackets and pullovers releases thousands of microscopic plastic fibers, or microfibers, into the environment — from their favorite national park to agricultural lands to waters with fish that make it back onto our plates.

This has scientists wondering: Are we eating our sweaters' synthetic microfibers?

Probably, says Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, St. George. "Microfibers seem to be one of the most common plastic debris items in animals and environmental samples," Rochman says.