chemical companies will not give up on antimicrobials

“ECO-FRIENDLY ANTIMICROBIALS”, IS THAT A TRUE STATEMENT? NO

This is the title of an article in the latest issue of “Specialty Fabrics Review” magazine.

The sub-title is “Problems mean opportunities for sustainable solutions”.

According to the opening of the article “antimicrobial properties are fast becoming a required treatment for applications that include domestic textiles for clothing”. To the best of my knowledge no law has been past stating this is required additional chemical applied to fabrics. Of course the chemical companies that make these poisons would love it to be true.

The problem they are trying to circumvent deals with silver as their active ingredient. Apparently the silver causes pollution when it is processed and then it washes out causing further pollution. The chemical companies are now working with either the inside of oyster shells or mother of pearl fine powder. They claim that the shells would otherwise go into the land fill. To the best of my knowledge maybe 100 years ago oyster farmers realized that to keep the oysters producing they need the oyster shells thrown back into the spurning area so the calcium would breakdown for new oysters to be born and live. The mother of pearl is probably the same. Maybe these “chemical engineers” do not like oysters and abalone.

The article speaks of several alternatives but all have some form of problem polluting the waters. One method they are working on is to reduce the amount of chemical applied to the fabric. They claim the less weight applied will reduce shipping costs of the finished garments. A ludicrous claims as far as I am concerned. What that tells me is the garments will be made in Asia and of course the amount of chemical applied to the fabrics will never be controlled not that it will matter. You have to understand that these chemicals will hurt the person who wears the garments.

The last paragraph states the following; “But environmental concerns around traditional antimicrobial processes have also forced researchers and manufacturers to seek creative solutions to the problem”.

This is a three page article explaining all of the things they are doing in an attempt to create a chemical product that will not do what these chemical companies want to accomplish. All they want to do is make money selling a product that is in my opinion not only damaging to the environment but more importantly the people who wear the clothing impregnated with these chemicals.

These companies are following the lead of other companies that have preceded them in the textile business for the past 40 plus years. Create a product discover that what you have doesn’t work so ypou spend the next 40 plus years trying to fix the problem all the while advertising that you now have the flaws of the product fixed. That said there are people who seemingly have no problem believing the advertising B/S and therefore buy the new product that will prove to not work any better than the old one.

I wonder how many of the people who spend the time reading all of the labels on food products before they ingest them also read labels on clothing before they buy and wear them? I know many who read up on food but wear clothing garments that do not work as advertised, so I have answered my own question

Want to live a long life; stay away from antimicrobials.