15 ms·

Microfibers Released into the Air from a Household Tumble Dryer

47 points by pueblito 5y ago

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
So this would theoretically be a lot worse for those washing machine + tumbledryer combi machines (1 drum for both functions) since those don't even have a lint filter as such?
hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
The issue here is the plastic fibres being released and spread - a real issue. The lint filter grabs alot of it, but some escape. Wouldn't these fibres break off anyway? So the problem is plastic and treated clothing releasing poisons. Also we are wearing these poisons. Thus the problem is the regulation of the clothing industry, and choices we make regarding fashion. Further, the problem is using poisons to manufacture many if not most of humanities daily goods.
h2odragon 5y ago
good argument for keeping the washer and dryer in the garage. However, these fabrics are shedding lint into the air when worked and worn and out too, to some extent, even if not to the rate and with the spray that agitation and hot air give them. The obvious solution for maximum health is to wear nothing but animal leather (birthday suits count!) and live outdoors.
mikewarot 5y ago
If only there were a way to dry clothes that didn't involve heat or tumbling. You'd need to do it outdoors to prevent pollution of indoor air. I'm sure we could solve this problem, and scale it, if we could get a good funding round. ;-)
- nikolay 5y ago
  How about not wearing plastic clothes at all?
- twojacobtwo 5y ago
  So long as those of us in the northern climes' buy a few extra months worth of outfits to run through while we wait for the ice to sublimate out of the last batch during winter. What's crazy is that there are cities that outright ban outdoor (line) air drying. In my city, they don't actually mention clotheslines, but a former neighbor of mine was given a fine for erecting a 'structure' without a permit, in the form of a single line (on which she hung her laundry) running from the house to the detached garage.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Uhhh, dry indoors over winter? It’s really fast since the air usually has very low humidity. It’s really efficient since you’re not actively pumping warm air outside, and your furnace is driving the evaporation process (which is likely “high” efficiency). Drying in humid weather is what can take a while.
    - stevesimmons 5y ago
      Agree 100%. I don't understand the need for dryers. The houses I've lived in have always had drying racks in the laundry, next to the washing machine and central heating boiler. Clothes get taken out of the washing machine, hung on the drying rack, and 6-24 hours later they are dry. Works 365 days a year, regardless of weather. Free. In my current place, the drying racks are wall-mounted and foldable, and push back against the wall when not in use. Previously I've had ceiling mounted ones.
    - brnt 5y ago
      Indoor heating is often gas fired, or worse. This means that any heater that uses a heatpump, which is every dryer nowadays, is going to beat your house heater in terms of efficiency by a factor of 5 or so. Plus, your house would get humid fast with indoor drying. Around here people don't often have aircos that can dehumidify, so opening the windows is the only solution, reducing efficiency even further. And keeping the moist inside also causes heating costs to go up, since you've just increased the thermal mass of your air. Plus, moist indoor air has adverse health effects of its own. Plus: I'd basically need to reserve a room just for drying. No, a dryer is on all accounts the better solution.
londons_explore 5y ago
"condenser dryers" have a lint filter which is supposed to collect said microplastics. They also recycle the same air so any fibers not collected by the filter stay inside the machine. However, despite all that, I still notice more lint in dust around my house in months I use the dryer. I suspect the dryer has a poor seal around the front and back of the drum (the seals are just made of felt, and as heavy clothes bounce around I think they briefly lose contact). That allows steamy linty air to leak into the body of the machine, and eventually escape out of cooling vents.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Mate of mine bought dryer since drying clothes indoors produced too much dust - these things depend on your circumstances.
  - brnt 5y ago
    I too am quite happy to have a noticably less dusty house since I boight a dryer. It's true the lint filter does not seem to catch everything and around the air vent the device gets dusty. Still an improvement over the previous situation.
aaron695 5y ago
I like the way they don't even bother to measure the PM2.5 and PM10, the stuff that kills human beings. Instead it's the stuff the masses masturbates to, homeopathic microfibers which eat at our souls. Science is broken, they could have tacked the real data on at small cost and have kept their self worth, but they don't even pretend to be real anymore.
- brnt 5y ago
  Dust is a real problem too, not just for people with asthma. It collects in your lungs just like fine particulates can, and can cause infections.
zcw100 5y ago
Most of the commentary I see focuses exclusively on the technical aspects of drying clothes, heat exchangers, humidity, mould problems but I haven't seen one comment on the labor aspect of it. It takes a significant amount of time to take your clothes out of the washing machine and hang each and every garment either over a drying rack or pin it to a clothes line. Each and every sock, every pair of underwear and a couple of pins for each pair of pants and shirt. Not to mention sheets and towels. That's going to take a significant amount of space with a lot of walking back and forth or constantly moving a basket of heavy wet clothes. I'm not saying it's a Herculean task but it's going to take time and you'd better to it right. Doing it wrong is a great way to stretch your cloths out and possibly damage them. This is just not the kind of time most people working full time are going to have. You can leave it out while you're at work but you'll probably only do that until the first time it rains while you're at work and you have to pick up the cloths that blew off and ended up in the dirt and the rest of your clothes are soaked. What about people that live in the city? They don't generally even have a washer and dryer. They'll go to the laundromat. Do you want them to carry the wet heavy cloths home?
- skylanh 5y ago
  My clothes dryer was broken for a time while I waited for a replacement and to install the new one. In the interim, I replaced the dryer with a chrome (Ikea) shelving unit, a vapour barrier shroud (literally 5mil plastic), and a regular house dehumidifier. For a full load of towels--or any heavy water absorbing material really--run times were about 2-3-5 hours. Clothing would be brought to the whatever humidity value "Continuous Operation" would cause. In general I assumed that was lower than line drying would cause, but less than line drying with direct sun exposure. There was some effort involved in sorting clothing onto shelves. But very little real effort. About as quick to shelve and unshelve a full load as... well, doing just that. (10 minutes?) I would probably avoid this with clothing that rest against high-bacterial load, high-smell areas (armpits, feet). Or more importantly, change my process for washing those items. It would be a relatively straight-forward process to build a large drum machine based on an industrial dryer barrel, and attach an inline dehumidifier, and then run the drum in an intermittent mix mode.
  - 5y ago

47 points by pueblito 5y ago

So this would theoretically be a lot worse for those washing machine + tumbledryer combi machines (1 drum for both functions) since those don't even have a lint filter as such?

hazza_n_dazza 5y ago

The issue here is the plastic fibres being released and spread - a real issue. The lint filter grabs alot of it, but some escape. Wouldn't these fibres break off anyway? So the problem is plastic and treated clothing releasing poisons. Also we are wearing these poisons. Thus the problem is the regulation of the clothing industry, and choices we make regarding fashion. Further, the problem is using poisons to manufacture many if not most of humanities daily goods.

h2odragon 5y ago

good argument for keeping the washer and dryer in the garage. However, these fabrics are shedding lint into the air when worked and worn and out too, to some extent, even if not to the rate and with the spray that agitation and hot air give them. The obvious solution for maximum health is to wear nothing but animal leather (birthday suits count!) and live outdoors.

mikewarot 5y ago

If only there were a way to dry clothes that didn't involve heat or tumbling. You'd need to do it outdoors to prevent pollution of indoor air. I'm sure we could solve this problem, and scale it, if we could get a good funding round. ;-)

nikolay 5y ago
How about not wearing plastic clothes at all?
twojacobtwo 5y ago
So long as those of us in the northern climes' buy a few extra months worth of outfits to run through while we wait for the ice to sublimate out of the last batch during winter. What's crazy is that there are cities that outright ban outdoor (line) air drying. In my city, they don't actually mention clotheslines, but a former neighbor of mine was given a fine for erecting a 'structure' without a permit, in the form of a single line (on which she hung her laundry) running from the house to the detached garage.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Uhhh, dry indoors over winter? It’s really fast since the air usually has very low humidity. It’s really efficient since you’re not actively pumping warm air outside, and your furnace is driving the evaporation process (which is likely “high” efficiency). Drying in humid weather is what can take a while.
  - stevesimmons 5y ago
    Agree 100%. I don't understand the need for dryers. The houses I've lived in have always had drying racks in the laundry, next to the washing machine and central heating boiler. Clothes get taken out of the washing machine, hung on the drying rack, and 6-24 hours later they are dry. Works 365 days a year, regardless of weather. Free. In my current place, the drying racks are wall-mounted and foldable, and push back against the wall when not in use. Previously I've had ceiling mounted ones.
  - brnt 5y ago
    Indoor heating is often gas fired, or worse. This means that any heater that uses a heatpump, which is every dryer nowadays, is going to beat your house heater in terms of efficiency by a factor of 5 or so. Plus, your house would get humid fast with indoor drying. Around here people don't often have aircos that can dehumidify, so opening the windows is the only solution, reducing efficiency even further. And keeping the moist inside also causes heating costs to go up, since you've just increased the thermal mass of your air. Plus, moist indoor air has adverse health effects of its own. Plus: I'd basically need to reserve a room just for drying. No, a dryer is on all accounts the better solution.

londons_explore 5y ago

"condenser dryers" have a lint filter which is supposed to collect said microplastics. They also recycle the same air so any fibers not collected by the filter stay inside the machine. However, despite all that, I still notice more lint in dust around my house in months I use the dryer. I suspect the dryer has a poor seal around the front and back of the drum (the seals are just made of felt, and as heavy clothes bounce around I think they briefly lose contact). That allows steamy linty air to leak into the body of the machine, and eventually escape out of cooling vents.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
Mate of mine bought dryer since drying clothes indoors produced too much dust - these things depend on your circumstances.
- brnt 5y ago
  I too am quite happy to have a noticably less dusty house since I boight a dryer. It's true the lint filter does not seem to catch everything and around the air vent the device gets dusty. Still an improvement over the previous situation.

aaron695 5y ago

I like the way they don't even bother to measure the PM2.5 and PM10, the stuff that kills human beings. Instead it's the stuff the masses masturbates to, homeopathic microfibers which eat at our souls. Science is broken, they could have tacked the real data on at small cost and have kept their self worth, but they don't even pretend to be real anymore.

brnt 5y ago
Dust is a real problem too, not just for people with asthma. It collects in your lungs just like fine particulates can, and can cause infections.

zcw100 5y ago

Most of the commentary I see focuses exclusively on the technical aspects of drying clothes, heat exchangers, humidity, mould problems but I haven't seen one comment on the labor aspect of it. It takes a significant amount of time to take your clothes out of the washing machine and hang each and every garment either over a drying rack or pin it to a clothes line. Each and every sock, every pair of underwear and a couple of pins for each pair of pants and shirt. Not to mention sheets and towels. That's going to take a significant amount of space with a lot of walking back and forth or constantly moving a basket of heavy wet clothes. I'm not saying it's a Herculean task but it's going to take time and you'd better to it right. Doing it wrong is a great way to stretch your cloths out and possibly damage them. This is just not the kind of time most people working full time are going to have. You can leave it out while you're at work but you'll probably only do that until the first time it rains while you're at work and you have to pick up the cloths that blew off and ended up in the dirt and the rest of your clothes are soaked. What about people that live in the city? They don't generally even have a washer and dryer. They'll go to the laundromat. Do you want them to carry the wet heavy cloths home?

skylanh 5y ago
My clothes dryer was broken for a time while I waited for a replacement and to install the new one. In the interim, I replaced the dryer with a chrome (Ikea) shelving unit, a vapour barrier shroud (literally 5mil plastic), and a regular house dehumidifier. For a full load of towels--or any heavy water absorbing material really--run times were about 2-3-5 hours. Clothing would be brought to the whatever humidity value "Continuous Operation" would cause. In general I assumed that was lower than line drying would cause, but less than line drying with direct sun exposure. There was some effort involved in sorting clothing onto shelves. But very little real effort. About as quick to shelve and unshelve a full load as... well, doing just that. (10 minutes?) I would probably avoid this with clothing that rest against high-bacterial load, high-smell areas (armpits, feet). Or more importantly, change my process for washing those items. It would be a relatively straight-forward process to build a large drum machine based on an industrial dryer barrel, and attach an inline dehumidifier, and then run the drum in an intermittent mix mode.
- 5y ago