As mentioned in my previous posts, it is clear that festival activities can sometimes be major contributors to the environment. Until now, we have covered many pollutive festival practices such as playing with fireworks, immersing god idols, and burning joss paper. These are all traditional practices embodied in old civilizations that can date back at least one thousand years ago. Apart from those, new festival practices are continuously being developed and adopted by people. These new practices are already considered “traditions” and “must-do” by some. Some good examples of “new traditions” include massive shopping happening on Thanksgiving day, New year’s day, and Christmas. There are even some completely new festivals mainly designed for shopping, like Black Friday in the West, and its equivalent, “double 11” in China. Clearly, such new traditions are capitalists’ strategies for ritualizing consumption and advocating consumerism – strategies for increasingly higher profits. Consumerism is a global-scale phenomenon, from which problem arises, including depleting natural resources, waste generation, and exploiting labor in production units. In this post, I will talk about environmental pollution due to these new festival practices, focusing on microfiber pollution from garments and textiles.
Shoppers on Black Friday (photo credit: maybeMaybeMaybe)
Pathways of microfiber pollution (photo credit: Liu et.al)
Microfibers are a new category of artificial ultra-fine fibers with diameters of less than 10 micrometers. Some useful properties make microfibers good materials for clothes. The fibers are made from different plastics like polyester and acrylic. This means microfibers are also a subcategory of microplastics, whose sources are mainly from the textile industry and domestic laundry (Sunanda et al, 2019). Since nowadays textile production is concentrated in Asian developing countries, such countries undoubtedly become the major microfiber-polluting countries.
Types of microfibers (photo credit: Athey and Erdle)
Ocean receives the biggest impact from microfiber pollution. It is calculated that 2 million tonnes of microfibers enter the ocean each year and 1.5 million trillion microfibers are now present in the ocean(Sunanda et al, 2019). It is also estimated that 34.8% of all marine microplastic pollution is due to synthetic textiles (Boucher and Friot). Since microfibers are extremely thin and light, they are able to be dispersed and transported by the wind and water over a long distance and eventually deposited in oceans (Liu et.al., 2021). Due to their tiny size similar to planktons, microfibers are unknowingly ingested by filter feeders that are at the bottom of the food chain. This will pollute the entire food chain as microfibers in the oceans will then be consumed by marine faunas, mainly fishes, and accumulate in their bodies. Ultimately, fish that are polluted by microfibers are consumed by us. Similar processes also appear in freshwater systems. One research has shown that 83% of fish caught in a river in Brazil were contaminated by microplastic and around 50% of the plastics are fibers (Silva-Cavalcanti et.al, 2017).
Microfiber in fish (Photo credit: Silva-Cavalcanti et.al)
Microfibers have been found to be toxic to human beings. Their health impacts include damage to the liver, kidney, and intestines (Meeker et.al, 2009). A chemical called Bisphenol A is also present in microfibers which can cause damage to the female reproductive system (Meeker et.al, 2009). Microfibers do not only enter human bodies through the consumption of marine fauna, they can also be ingested through drinking water and breathing, as 83% of global drinking water was detected to be polluted by microfibers (Shakeri, 2017).
Percentage of tap water samples present in contaminated with microfibers (photo credit: Sunanda et al)
Microfibers are able to have synergistic effects with other pollutants. One study has shown that microfibers are able to attract other pollutant particles (Jeanne et.al, 2016). Nonylphenols and heavy water (D2O) molecules are found to be able to attach themselves to microfiber and the increase in humidity will strengthen the attractive force. Similarly, other studies also found that heavy metals (Cu, Cd, and Pb) can also attach themselves to microplastics (Sun et.al, 2019). In this study, researchers have found that the ingestion of heavy metal-attached microplastic severely damaged their target species: yellow seahorse, Hippocampus kuda, by suppressing their growth rate, resulting in decreased body length. Overall, microfibers together with other pollutants can bring huge damage to the ecosystem and human health.
Since the textile industry is the main contributor to microfiber pollution, it would be important to curb pollution from its source. Consumerism accelerated the process of garment production and shopping festivals become the perfect chance for people to overshop. As a result, people buy more clothes than they actually require. In this process, pollutants like microfibers are created and enter the environment, bringing damage to both the ecosystem and our health. However, there are still many people who consider such activities as “traditions” and refuse to stop. There is thus an urgent need for more sustainable garment production and consumption.
Thank you very much for reading. I will see you next week!
References:
Boucher J, Friot D (2017) Primary Microplastics in the Oceans: a global evaluation of sources. Gland, Switzerland
Jacqueline Santos Silva-Cavalcanti, José Diego B. Silva, Elton José de França, Maria Christina Barbosa de Araújo, Felipe Gusmão, Microplastics ingestion by a common tropical freshwater fishing resource, Environmental Pollution, Volume 221, 2017, Pages 218-226, ISSN 0269-7491, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2016.11.068. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026974911632396X)
J.D. Meeker, S. Sathyanarayana, S.H. Swan. Phthalates and other additives in plastics: human exposure and associated health outcomes Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B Biol. Sci., 364 (1526) (2009), pp. 2097-2113. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2008.0268
Jeanne M. Hankett, William R. Collin, Pei Yang, Zhan Chen, and Melissa Duhaime. Low-Volatility Model Demonstrates Humidity Affects Environmental Toxin Deposition on Plastics at a Molecular Level. Environmental Science & Technology 2016 50 (3), 1304-1312 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b05598 (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05598)
Liu, J., Liang, J., Ding, J. et al. Microfiber pollution: an ongoing major environmental issue related to the sustainable development of textile and clothing industry. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 11240–11256 (2021). https://doi-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1007/s10668-020-01173-3
Sima Shakeri. (2017). 83% Of The World’s Tap Water Contains Plastic Fibres: Study. https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/world-tap-water-plastic_ca_5cd4fedde4b07bc72973cf26
Sunanda Mishra, Chandi charan Rath, Alok Prasad Das, Marine microfiber pollution: A review on present status and future challenges,Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 140, (2019), Pages 188-197, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.01.039. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X19300451)
Sun Jinhui, Xia Sudong, Ning Yan, Pan Xia, Qu Jiahao, Xu Yongjian, Effects of microplastics and attached heavy metals on growth, immunity, and heavy metal accumulation in the yellow seahorse, Hippocampus kuda Bleeker, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 149, 2019, 110510, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.110510. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X19306484)