Hey fellow ethical fashionistas! In our previous few posts, we have focused heavily on how the textile industry contributes to water pollution. In this post and subsequent posts, we will shift our focus onto the atmosphere and how the textile industry contributes to air pollution. Through this approach, we aim to shed light on how a single industry like the textile industry can pollute the environment in a myriad of ways. We would also like to elucidate the fact that our ecosystem is deeply intertwined. The air pollutants produced are more often than not interconnected with the water pollution that we see or experience.
The textile industry is a very energy intensive industry. They require large amounts of energy in different processes of textile production. These processes range from the weaving, spinning, to chemical processing and other miscellaneous purposes (Choudhury, 2013). Weaving and spinning requires electrical energy while thermal energy features mainly in chemical processing. For the latter, a large amount of non-renewable energy resources is used to obtain thermal energy for chemical processing. In fact, the ‘total thermal energy required per metre of cloth is 18.8–23 MJ’ (Choudhury, 2013, p. 44). Imagine how much thermal energy the textile industry has to generate in order to meet the demands of consumers.
On the other hand, the other processes like weaving and spinning, require massive amounts of electricity to be generated. The electrical energy is generated from non-renewable energy resources like coal. Now you may be wondering what has all this energy got to do with air pollution. The answer is that all this large energy requirement is generated from the burning of non renewable energy resources like that of fossil fuels. Hence, the textile industry produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide and also other emissions like nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxides.
Emissions such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides contribute to various pollution issues. One being ground level ozone which is found in photochemical smog (Hill, 2010). Nitrogen oxides together with volatile organic compounds will react together in the presence of sunlight to produce ground level ozone as seen in figure 1 below. Although ozone is not the primary pollutant, it is responsible for a lot of damage caused in people’s health. As such, many secondary pollutants can sometimes be even more harmful than the primary pollutants. Some of the acute health effects of ozone include irritation of the nose, eyes and lungs. Ground-level ozone especially affects the lungs ability to function and people with respiratory issues will most likely be the ones most susceptible to respiratory infections (Hill, 2010). Figure 2 below also shows how countries look like when they are being engulfed in photochemical smog.
For emissions like sulphur dioxides, it can be converted to sulphuric acid or sulfates (Hill, 2010). They will definitely acidify water bodies when they are being washed out by rain. Additionally, nitrogen oxides have the same ability to acidify water bodies. Hence, this shows that although these air pollutants were emitted into the atmosphere during the processing of textiles, it also greatly affects other environments like our water bodies. The ecosystem that we live in is closely related and tied to each other. Therefore, a pollutant emitted into the atmosphere may have lasting effects on other ecosystems like the water bodies.
To sum up, the textile industry produces a lot of emissions and they not only adversely affect human health, but also the environment we live in. Many of these air pollutants may even produce secondary pollutants like ozone as mentioned above. It is important to note that many of these consequences on the environment and on human health can never be accurately pinned down. This is because many of the effects are based on the individual pollutants acting independently. Pollutants have the ability to react with other pollutants and this effect has not been taken into account as may even be more devastating than the effects we now know. The only hope I can have for now is to be able to reduce our emissions from the various industries. With the rise in demand for sustainable fashion, hopefully, the textile industry is permanently moving towards a greener direction and not because of greenwashing.
References:
Asim Kumar Roy Choudhury (2013) Green chemistry and the textile industry, Textile Progress, 45:1, 3-143, DOI: 10.1080/00405167.2013.807601
Griffiths, J. (2018). As smog season begins, China warns against leaving residents without winter heat. Retrieved 24 September, 2020, from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/18/health/china-smog-winter-fuel-pollution-beijing-intl/index.html
Hill, M. (2010). Air pollution. In Understanding Environmental Pollution (pp.117 – 154). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511840654.010
