Introduction to textile pollution

Microplastics (MPs) are pieces of plastic ranging from 5 millimeter in size down to microscopic. The number of MPs found in water samples depends on the collecting methods. Ingestion has been reported in marine mammals, birds, fishes, macroinvertebrates and plankton. Most of the plastics found inside animals in the field are MFs, which may reflect their relative abundance in the environment, and/or potentially that they are not eliminated as readily as other shapes. It is important to study to what degree MPs can move out of the digestive system into other tissues rather than being egested. Most laboratory studies of trophic transfer used microspheres (MSs), despite the fact that they are scarce in the environment. The degree and type of effects that MPs produce depends on polymer type, size, shape, concentration, exposure time, and adsorbed chemicals. The washing process of textiles is identified as one of the major sources of MF pollution.