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Apart from food packaging, one great way to easily ingest plastic is to use synthetic clothing. Just a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes t

Apart from food packaging, one great way to easily ingest plastic is to use synthetic clothing. Just a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes thousands of polyester particles to release in thin air, readily breathable. Not just clothing, but also bedding is a huge issue. With pillows, mattresses and towels mostly made of synthetic fibers. My usual instinct is: try rubbing the synthetic material; if it releases thousands of particles in thin air, stay away from it

buildbot 2y ago
I hate how normalized this is. Breathing in a difficult to break down plastic dust is not something that seems healthy.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Nitpick: All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things (and tend to meddle with the chemical processes required for life). If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs. > If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time. Well, plastic, glass or metal, no matter what the jugs are made of, they'll hurt your lungs just like the tire dust will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumoconiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumoconiosis
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      >Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs. Yup. I was thinking of heading off comments like yours by mentioning silicosis or lead poisoning but didn't want to clutter up a simple clarification. Anyway, still mostly safer than "happy to react with things" compounds which is why people like you get to make comments about it here and now vs it simply being a thing everyone has accepted is not good to breath for hundreds of years (like certain wood dusts)
    - webstrand 2y ago
      > There is no mechanism at all I think that's somewhat misleading, the lung has a mucus layer and cilia to move particles caught in the mucus up and out. But I'll agree that it's not a completely robust system. Anything that gets past or can't be moved by the mucus layer is going to be a problem, especially particles that can't be broken down by the macrophages.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Aren't they both plastic?
    - klodolph 2y ago
      There are plastics in the tire, but the exterior bulk of the tire is rubber, which is not plastic.
      - arcticbull 2y ago
        Yep, rubbers are generally the class of elastomers. Natural rubber is poly-cis-isoprene, synthetic rubbers are a mix of petroleum-derived polymers.
      - verseguru 2y ago
        Bulk no. Tyres are apparently only 19% natural rubber. Slightly more is synthetic, and the rest… well none of it is good ground up on roads then breathed in. I lived for a while next to a moderately busy road. Feck it was filthy even with windows never open. Even my mountain bike tyres now contain graphene which doesn't sound like a good idea for the sake of an unnoticeable improvement, and prob only as a racer. Seems a case of new jargon selling more. So they keep adding new compounds.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    > All else being equal This premise only exists in a synthetic hypothetical universe.
    - Dilettante_ 2y ago
      Would it be too snarky for HN to reply "Yes, that is indeed how hypothethicals work"?
      - sitkack 2y ago
        That would totally be on brand. What is important is to take start with a very real problem that should be resolved in this universe, then project the discussion into a very close but different one and argue there. Now it doesn't matter if you win or lose in that universe because it doesn't matter. It isn't our reality. Hypothetically speaking.
        Dilettante_ 2y ago
        Well the purpose of such hypotheticals is to isolate a smaller part of the problem and examine it more closely outside of the larger context, to decompose the matter at hand in order to more easily get a grasp. I think there's value to that, of course as you pointed out only as an aside to the larger discussion, not as a replacement. The person you originally quoted did mark their post as a nitpick.
  - brnt 2y ago
    I doubt this. Sure, reactants aren't good, but impossible to biologically break down neither. Causing havoc and bioacumulating seem to be two ends of a spectrum, where you want to be in the middle. Stuff that safely and easily broken down.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things There's a similar paradox in nuclear radiation. (Sometimes expressed with a puzzle about differently radioactive cookies and what to do with each.) Gamma rays are scary because it takes a lot of lead shielding to even slow them down... but that also means that they aren't stopping to interact with things--like yourself--as they travel. Alpha particles seem relatively safe because they don't travel far and are blocked by your skin... But that means they're doing something to that skin, and luckily for you any damage is being dealt to already-dead cells on the outside. But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly.
    - nordsieck 2y ago
      > But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly. That's definitely the case with Polonium-210. Even though it emits alpha particles, it's very dangerous to ingest.
- kulahan 2y ago
  Nobody is going around purposely breathing in plastic dust, there's been dust everywhere forever, and breathing in dust is a natural and unavoidable part of life. What, exactly, do you think is normalized here? That people wear clothing? That people didn't throw out every polyester fiber the moment somebody said plastic can break down into small pieces? That people aren't freaking out over a danger that we know roughly nothing about so far? People really need to stop finding excuses to freak out over things.
zw7 2y ago
I think about this every time I clean out the dryer lint filter and a plume of lint dust comes off of it. I try to avoid breathing it in but it’s likely some is making it into my airways.
- jerlam 2y ago
  The lint is also the residue from your clothes being worn away. If you can, consider not using the dryer at all, especially for synthetic clothing which air dry quickly compared to cotton.
- faitswulff 2y ago
  Since getting used to them during Covid, I've continued wearing masks for situations just like this.
  - hedgehog 2y ago
    I manage that by using a vacuum to clean my lint filter but folding seems to release a lot of dust so I do that next to an air filter.
  - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    lol I’m sure those masks aren’t full of microplastics themselves. People were wearing them entire shifts and worse we jammed them on kids. I’m sure those cheap shitty masks were absolutely full of wholesome healthy microplastic.
- mike_ivanov 2y ago
  Besides containing microplastics, the dryer lint is also radioactive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858
- nosianu 2y ago
  Try shaking out a piece of clothing in full sunlight. It helps you see the millions of future dust particles that will come off your clothing. Over the years I found that of all the dust in my home the vast majority comes from my clothing. I deduced that because the collected dust looks the same as what I find in the dryer, and it feels like cotton too (my by far most warn kind of fiber). That means rooms are full of tiny particles from your clothes, if I assume that my home is not an anomaly (and why should it be). Direct sunlight really helps to see how much dust there is all around us, and how with every little movement we create more. That does not even show the particles too small to be seen. The difference is gigantic - without that sunlight you don't see any dust and think the air is clean. I'm not too concerned, since humanity must have dealt with this for a long time. Particles from fire especially, and there are lots coming from even the tiniest flame. My main worry would be chemicals we add to clothes, but given that by now we ingest plastic pretty much all the time, with every meal, with every breath, we just have to wait and see. I don't see a way to end this long-running experiment.
ericmcer 2y ago
Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply. We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need.
- schiffern 2y ago
  The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields. They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter." I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. [1] https://www.filtrol.net/ https://www.filtrol.net/ [2] https://planetcare.org/ https://planetcare.org/
  - onlypassingthru 2y ago
    > I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. Isn't that just the lint filter? Every dryer I've seen has one.
    - kyleee 2y ago
      Those are probably not fine enough (in terms of filtration) and retrofit may be difficult if it restricts airflow.
- haccount 2y ago
  There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry. Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.
mschuster91 2y ago
> Not just clothing, but also bedding is a huge issue. With pillows, mattresses and towels mostly made of synthetic fibers. Preach. I vacuum my bedsheets every day because my cats are insane shedders and I'd otherwise get breaded with cat fur, but the vacuum is full with so much what is clearly not cat fur...
binarymax 2y ago
It’s frustrating how hard it is now to buy pure cotton or <gasp> wool, from a store. Even if it’s 3% synthetic it’s still not what I’m looking for.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  Yep. Specifically, why are 100% cotton socks so ridiculously hard to find now? It used to be that they were a little more expensive - now you need to go online to find them. 'Fun' fact - the average brain has about 7 grams of microplastic [0] in it now, up 50% from 2016. At that rate... SEVEN FUCKING GRAMS. Guys this is beyond stupid. Even if plastic were totally inert, as I've heard people insist with certainty (where are they getting these ideas!), 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying. 0 - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-wellness/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-...
  - layer8 2y ago
    > Even if plastic were totally inert […], 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying. Why do you find that terrifying, if it’s inert? To the downvoters: This is a genuine question.
    - brnt 2y ago
      The simple answer is that it isn't supposed be there. The more interesting one is: how much would you say is too much? Would a kilo of microplastics towards the end of your life do it?
      - layer8 2y ago
        When it has adverse effects (and no benefits), then of course it’s too much. But GP seemed to be saying they find it terrifying even assuming no adverse effects, which I found curious. A huge number of people have implements in their bodies (in their teeth, most often), and much more than seven grams of “foreign stuff” in their stomach and intestines all the time, so that by itself doesn’t seem anything to be terrified of.
29athrowaway 2y ago
And plastic shower liners.
afh1 2y ago
Hum, almost all of my t-shirts are 100% cotton, or at least that's what the label says. I use mostly the same clothes from 15 years ago so maybe synthetic is more common nowadays? I think the only t-shirts I own that are not 100% cotton are those I've got for free on things like marathons and hackathons. Does it contain phthalate? I have no idea, there is no label saying what they are made of. Probably polyester. Does it have phthalates in any meaningful concentration? This review says basically that "it varies a lot" and "needs further study". https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1382668924000978 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138266892...
- brookside 2y ago
  I recall the cotton tees of my youth being stiff and terrible-feeling.
  - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    100% cotton can be waaay comfier than poly blends. Just depends on the weave/wash
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Did your mother (or whomever did the laundry) dry them on a clothesline? Air-dried clothes will be a bit more stiff than tumble-dried.
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    When I was younger, it was common to add starch to make the cotton easier to iron etc - that would definitely make it stiff. Thankfully we don't do that anymore. Comfortwise, Cotton beats practically any other fabric + it gets softer the longer you use it so in a way it actually incentivizes reuse.
- resoluteteeth 2y ago
  Interestingly Table 4 in that link shows "Plain weave cotton" and "polyster" having similar levels of phthalates. I don't think phtalates are needed as plasticizers in polyster, so I guess they are coming from the dyes or something else used to treat the fabrics, meaning that the choice of cotton or polyster may not matter for phthalates specifically?
brnt 2y ago
I often wonder about carpet or seats and couches. Also made of all manner of synthetic fabrics. Even besides the effects of living in the same space flame retardants slowly gas off over the decades, we rarely deep clean any of this, so when we sit down a cloud of craps wafts up into our lungs. I prefer noncarpets, but hard seating of course not.
Tade0 2y ago
My mattress cover is like that, as it's made from polyester. When I pull it from the dryer it produces an invisible, but irritating cloud of particles. All that while most of the shavings accumulate in the lint collector, so it could have been even worse.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes thousands of polyester particles to release in thin air, readily breathable Source?
- sktrdie 2y ago
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309221340.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309221340.h...
hammock 2y ago
Are there phthalates in polyester clothing?
SoftTalker 2y ago
Those fleece blankets and jackets too, they are made from recycled soda bottles.
nikolay 2y ago
For at least 10 years now, I only by 100% cotton or cotton-linen blend, or 100% wool - nothing else! Yet, there's so many sources of microplastics that can't be eliminated, unfortunately!
_w1tm 2y ago
> My usual instinct is: try rubbing the synthetic material; if it releases thousands of particles in thin air, stay away from it How thin should the air be and how do you measure the particles?
kazinator 2y ago
Just look at the lint filter of a dryer after just one load.
botanical 2y ago
Some of my polyester t-shirts have lasted more than 10 years without any loss in colour or quality, it's a damn shame they cause microplastics since it's probably better that people don't buy clothing every month if clothes lasted longer.

buildbot 2y ago

I hate how normalized this is. Breathing in a difficult to break down plastic dust is not something that seems healthy.

potato3732842 2y ago
Nitpick: All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things (and tend to meddle with the chemical processes required for life). If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs. > If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time. Well, plastic, glass or metal, no matter what the jugs are made of, they'll hurt your lungs just like the tire dust will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumoconiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumoconiosis
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs. Yup. I was thinking of heading off comments like yours by mentioning silicosis or lead poisoning but didn't want to clutter up a simple clarification. Anyway, still mostly safer than "happy to react with things" compounds which is why people like you get to make comments about it here and now vs it simply being a thing everyone has accepted is not good to breath for hundreds of years (like certain wood dusts)
  - webstrand 2y ago
    > There is no mechanism at all I think that's somewhat misleading, the lung has a mucus layer and cilia to move particles caught in the mucus up and out. But I'll agree that it's not a completely robust system. Anything that gets past or can't be moved by the mucus layer is going to be a problem, especially particles that can't be broken down by the macrophages.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Aren't they both plastic?
  - klodolph 2y ago
    There are plastics in the tire, but the exterior bulk of the tire is rubber, which is not plastic.
    - arcticbull 2y ago
      Yep, rubbers are generally the class of elastomers. Natural rubber is poly-cis-isoprene, synthetic rubbers are a mix of petroleum-derived polymers.
    - verseguru 2y ago
      Bulk no. Tyres are apparently only 19% natural rubber. Slightly more is synthetic, and the rest… well none of it is good ground up on roads then breathed in. I lived for a while next to a moderately busy road. Feck it was filthy even with windows never open. Even my mountain bike tyres now contain graphene which doesn't sound like a good idea for the sake of an unnoticeable improvement, and prob only as a racer. Seems a case of new jargon selling more. So they keep adding new compounds.
- sitkack 2y ago
  > All else being equal This premise only exists in a synthetic hypothetical universe.
  - Dilettante_ 2y ago
    Would it be too snarky for HN to reply "Yes, that is indeed how hypothethicals work"?
    - sitkack 2y ago
      That would totally be on brand. What is important is to take start with a very real problem that should be resolved in this universe, then project the discussion into a very close but different one and argue there. Now it doesn't matter if you win or lose in that universe because it doesn't matter. It isn't our reality. Hypothetically speaking.
      - Dilettante_ 2y ago
        Well the purpose of such hypotheticals is to isolate a smaller part of the problem and examine it more closely outside of the larger context, to decompose the matter at hand in order to more easily get a grasp. I think there's value to that, of course as you pointed out only as an aside to the larger discussion, not as a replacement. The person you originally quoted did mark their post as a nitpick.
- brnt 2y ago
  I doubt this. Sure, reactants aren't good, but impossible to biologically break down neither. Causing havoc and bioacumulating seem to be two ends of a spectrum, where you want to be in the middle. Stuff that safely and easily broken down.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things There's a similar paradox in nuclear radiation. (Sometimes expressed with a puzzle about differently radioactive cookies and what to do with each.) Gamma rays are scary because it takes a lot of lead shielding to even slow them down... but that also means that they aren't stopping to interact with things--like yourself--as they travel. Alpha particles seem relatively safe because they don't travel far and are blocked by your skin... But that means they're doing something to that skin, and luckily for you any damage is being dealt to already-dead cells on the outside. But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly. That's definitely the case with Polonium-210. Even though it emits alpha particles, it's very dangerous to ingest.
kulahan 2y ago
Nobody is going around purposely breathing in plastic dust, there's been dust everywhere forever, and breathing in dust is a natural and unavoidable part of life. What, exactly, do you think is normalized here? That people wear clothing? That people didn't throw out every polyester fiber the moment somebody said plastic can break down into small pieces? That people aren't freaking out over a danger that we know roughly nothing about so far? People really need to stop finding excuses to freak out over things.

zw7 2y ago

I think about this every time I clean out the dryer lint filter and a plume of lint dust comes off of it. I try to avoid breathing it in but it’s likely some is making it into my airways.

jerlam 2y ago
The lint is also the residue from your clothes being worn away. If you can, consider not using the dryer at all, especially for synthetic clothing which air dry quickly compared to cotton.
faitswulff 2y ago
Since getting used to them during Covid, I've continued wearing masks for situations just like this.
- hedgehog 2y ago
  I manage that by using a vacuum to clean my lint filter but folding seems to release a lot of dust so I do that next to an air filter.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  lol I’m sure those masks aren’t full of microplastics themselves. People were wearing them entire shifts and worse we jammed them on kids. I’m sure those cheap shitty masks were absolutely full of wholesome healthy microplastic.
mike_ivanov 2y ago
Besides containing microplastics, the dryer lint is also radioactive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858
nosianu 2y ago
Try shaking out a piece of clothing in full sunlight. It helps you see the millions of future dust particles that will come off your clothing. Over the years I found that of all the dust in my home the vast majority comes from my clothing. I deduced that because the collected dust looks the same as what I find in the dryer, and it feels like cotton too (my by far most warn kind of fiber). That means rooms are full of tiny particles from your clothes, if I assume that my home is not an anomaly (and why should it be). Direct sunlight really helps to see how much dust there is all around us, and how with every little movement we create more. That does not even show the particles too small to be seen. The difference is gigantic - without that sunlight you don't see any dust and think the air is clean. I'm not too concerned, since humanity must have dealt with this for a long time. Particles from fire especially, and there are lots coming from even the tiniest flame. My main worry would be chemicals we add to clothes, but given that by now we ingest plastic pretty much all the time, with every meal, with every breath, we just have to wait and see. I don't see a way to end this long-running experiment.

ericmcer 2y ago

Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply. We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need.

schiffern 2y ago
The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields. They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter." I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. [1] https://www.filtrol.net/ https://www.filtrol.net/ [2] https://planetcare.org/ https://planetcare.org/
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  > I wish they made comparable products for the dryer. Isn't that just the lint filter? Every dryer I've seen has one.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    Those are probably not fine enough (in terms of filtration) and retrofit may be difficult if it restricts airflow.
haccount 2y ago
There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry. Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Not just clothing, but also bedding is a huge issue. With pillows, mattresses and towels mostly made of synthetic fibers. Preach. I vacuum my bedsheets every day because my cats are insane shedders and I'd otherwise get breaded with cat fur, but the vacuum is full with so much what is clearly not cat fur...

binarymax 2y ago

It’s frustrating how hard it is now to buy pure cotton or <gasp> wool, from a store. Even if it’s 3% synthetic it’s still not what I’m looking for.

mandmandam 2y ago
Yep. Specifically, why are 100% cotton socks so ridiculously hard to find now? It used to be that they were a little more expensive - now you need to go online to find them. 'Fun' fact - the average brain has about 7 grams of microplastic [0] in it now, up 50% from 2016. At that rate... SEVEN FUCKING GRAMS. Guys this is beyond stupid. Even if plastic were totally inert, as I've heard people insist with certainty (where are they getting these ideas!), 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying. 0 - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-wellness/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-...
- layer8 2y ago
  > Even if plastic were totally inert […], 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying. Why do you find that terrifying, if it’s inert? To the downvoters: This is a genuine question.
  - brnt 2y ago
    The simple answer is that it isn't supposed be there. The more interesting one is: how much would you say is too much? Would a kilo of microplastics towards the end of your life do it?
    - layer8 2y ago
      When it has adverse effects (and no benefits), then of course it’s too much. But GP seemed to be saying they find it terrifying even assuming no adverse effects, which I found curious. A huge number of people have implements in their bodies (in their teeth, most often), and much more than seven grams of “foreign stuff” in their stomach and intestines all the time, so that by itself doesn’t seem anything to be terrified of.

29athrowaway 2y ago

And plastic shower liners.

afh1 2y ago

Hum, almost all of my t-shirts are 100% cotton, or at least that's what the label says. I use mostly the same clothes from 15 years ago so maybe synthetic is more common nowadays? I think the only t-shirts I own that are not 100% cotton are those I've got for free on things like marathons and hackathons. Does it contain phthalate? I have no idea, there is no label saying what they are made of. Probably polyester. Does it have phthalates in any meaningful concentration? This review says basically that "it varies a lot" and "needs further study". https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1382668924000978 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138266892...

brookside 2y ago
I recall the cotton tees of my youth being stiff and terrible-feeling.
- DontchaKnowit 2y ago
  100% cotton can be waaay comfier than poly blends. Just depends on the weave/wash
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Did your mother (or whomever did the laundry) dry them on a clothesline? Air-dried clothes will be a bit more stiff than tumble-dried.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  When I was younger, it was common to add starch to make the cotton easier to iron etc - that would definitely make it stiff. Thankfully we don't do that anymore. Comfortwise, Cotton beats practically any other fabric + it gets softer the longer you use it so in a way it actually incentivizes reuse.
resoluteteeth 2y ago
Interestingly Table 4 in that link shows "Plain weave cotton" and "polyster" having similar levels of phthalates. I don't think phtalates are needed as plasticizers in polyster, so I guess they are coming from the dyes or something else used to treat the fabrics, meaning that the choice of cotton or polyster may not matter for phthalates specifically?

brnt 2y ago

I often wonder about carpet or seats and couches. Also made of all manner of synthetic fabrics. Even besides the effects of living in the same space flame retardants slowly gas off over the decades, we rarely deep clean any of this, so when we sit down a cloud of craps wafts up into our lungs. I prefer noncarpets, but hard seating of course not.

Tade0 2y ago

My mattress cover is like that, as it's made from polyester. When I pull it from the dryer it produces an invisible, but irritating cloud of particles. All that while most of the shavings accumulate in the lint collector, so it could have been even worse.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes thousands of polyester particles to release in thin air, readily breathable Source?

sktrdie 2y ago
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309221340.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309221340.h...

hammock 2y ago

Are there phthalates in polyester clothing?

SoftTalker 2y ago

Those fleece blankets and jackets too, they are made from recycled soda bottles.

nikolay 2y ago

For at least 10 years now, I only by 100% cotton or cotton-linen blend, or 100% wool - nothing else! Yet, there's so many sources of microplastics that can't be eliminated, unfortunately!

_w1tm 2y ago

> My usual instinct is: try rubbing the synthetic material; if it releases thousands of particles in thin air, stay away from it How thin should the air be and how do you measure the particles?

kazinator 2y ago

Just look at the lint filter of a dryer after just one load.

botanical 2y ago

Some of my polyester t-shirts have lasted more than 10 years without any loss in colour or quality, it's a damn shame they cause microplastics since it's probably better that people don't buy clothing every month if clothes lasted longer.