Ever since lockdown has begun, (most) people have tossed their trousers, shirts and denims deep in the wardrobe and shifted to comfortable pyjamas and t-shirts. Most of us haven¡¯t even seen those in months.?
However, researchers now claim that denim is not really good for the environment.?
The bad news on denim jeans comes thanks to a study published by the American Chemical Society, where they¡¯ve discovered that denim jeans are actually a prominent source of microfibers -- small pieces of plastic -- in the Arctic and can endanger marine life.
Researchers looked at microplastic samples from the Canadian Arctic archipelago and Great Lakes. They took the help of microscopy and raman spectroscopy to identify and count indigo denim microfibers from various water samples that were collected in Canada.?
Raman spectroscopy tries to find information on the chemical structure with the help of a high-intensity laser source. Researchers found that microfibers from denim actually resulted in 23 percent of all microfibers in sediments from Great Lake, around 20 percent in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and 12 percent from shallow lakes all across Toronto.?
What¡¯s more, is that this microfiber had also made its way to the fishes as they found the fibres present in a fish dubbed rainbow smelt taken from the Great Lake. Looking at the level of microfibers, researchers discovered that wastewater treatment plants were responsible in discharging about 1 billion indigo denim microfibers every day.
Researchers also looked at how much of these microfibers are released upon washing a pair of jeans. In their experiments, they discovered that a single pair of jeans was responsible for releasing around 50,000 microfibers per wash cycle.
While the effects of these microfibers on marine life are still unknown, researchers do state that people washing denim clothing should wash them less frequently to reduce the number of microfibers that are released in the water.?