Honestly, you shouldn't have to wonder. The article is of poor quality. Given the concerns regarding microplastics release from the fabrics we wear causing envi

Honestly, you shouldn't have to wonder. The article is of poor quality. Given the concerns regarding microplastics release from the fabrics we wear causing environmental pollution in recent years, it would behoove any respectable science journalist/publication to press for answers to these "common sense" questions. Especially when they also seem so eager to mention >"Ma and Tao are now reaching out to textile manufacturers and clothing companies to try to get their fabric on shelves. They say the nanomaterial-infused fabric should add only about 10% to typical clothing manufacturing costs. “We can make it with mass production, which means everybody can get a T-shirt … and the cost is basically the same as their old stuff,” Ma says. “It can benefit everybody.”" Sure...and that's why stuff like PVC - one of the worst offenders of releasing microplastics into the water when washed - which was previously only used sparingly by professionals because human life depended on their using it but has sadly now come to be worn by a lot more people as a "fashion piece" way more frequently. The full paper appears to be paywalled? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/07/07/science.abi5484 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/07/07/scie... . Here's the Abstract - "Incorporating passive radiative cooling structures into personal thermal management technologies could effectively defend human against the intensifying global climate change. We show that large scale woven metafabrics can provide high emissivity (94.5%) in the atmospheric window and reflectivity (92.4%) in the solar spectrum because the hierarchical-morphology design of the randomly dispersed scatterers throughout the metafabric. Through scalable industrial textile manufacturing routes, our metafabrics exhibit excellent mechanical strength, waterproofness, and breathability for commercial clothing while maintaining efficient radiative cooling ability. Practical application tests demonstrated the human body covered by our metafabric could be cooled down ~4.8°C lower than that covered by commercial cotton fabric. The cost-effectiveness and high-performance of our metafabrics present great advantages for intelligent garments, smart textiles, and passive radiative cooling applications." Again, no mention of environmental impact. Also I don't know if this common is material sciences or not, so bear that in mind; but that Abstract reads like a pitch to VC firms to fund their startup. Am I wrong?