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Textile and Apparel Industry Addresses Emerging Issue of Microfiber Pollution

Journal of textile and apparel technology and management 2018 7 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Karen K. Leonas

Summary

This overview from the textile and apparel industry reviews the emerging issue of microfiber pollution, describing how synthetic fabrics shed tiny plastic fibers during laundering that pass through wastewater treatment systems into waterways. It calls for cross-disciplinary collaboration between environmental scientists, textile engineers, and apparel brands to develop effective solutions.

Plastics pollution in our waterways has been of concern for many years. More recently, microplastics have been identified and from that the subcategory of microfibers has been noted. Microfiber pollution is an emerging issue and research is ongoing by those in the environmental sciences, textile sciences, apparel technology, apparel brands and retailers to better understand and mitigate the associated impacts. . Like many of today’s global challenges, this is a complex issue and to develop effective solutions it will require expertise from different scientific disciplines to investigate this issue. Collaboration among the many disciplines will be necessary to develop a better understanding of the underlying causes and propose feasible solutions to address this concern.

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