Consumers’ Domestic Laundering Behavior in Relation to Microfiber Shedding

One of the growing concerns in pollution research is microfiber pollution (≤5 µm). Current research works aim to understand the difference between different household laundry practices and their impact on sheddability. The researcher through an online survey tried to extract consumer knowledge followed by contaminants analysis from the laundry effluent samples collected from 30 households. Three effluent laundry samples were collected and analyzed from each household for a 1-month laundry behavior analysis. Each household sample was properly coded from H1 to H30. The results stated that H26 has the highest sheddability index with 6.70% of the total emission followed by H17 (6.30%). SEM analysis conveyed the presence of nanofibers (≤1 µm), along with an abundance of microfibers (49.16%) of the total fibers released. An average of 5,849,943 MFs/L were released from the 30 households during all three wash trails. FTIR analysis also emphasized the presence of a wide range of fiber contents from cotton, polyester, elastane, and acrylic, to viscose. An attempt to study the optimized laundry variables such as reduced water temperature and wash cycle time showed no significant difference in the overall sheddability, whereas the same conditions were proven effective in reducing the microfiber shedding. The results show conclude that each household has different laundry needs and thus there is a need for a more critical understanding.