Polluting Textiles

Judith S. Weis is Professor Emerita in the Department of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author/editor of over 250 scientific articles, multiple books, including Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know (2014) and Biological Invasions and Animal Behaviour (2016, with Daniel Sol). Francesca De Falco is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth, UK. She holds a PhD in Industrial Products and Process Engineering from the University of Naples, Italy, with a thesis on microplastic pollution from synthetic textiles. She is author of one patent, three book chapters and 15 scientific articles with over 400 citations. Mariacristina Cocca is Permanent Researcher at Institute of Polymers, Composites and Biomaterials of the National Research Council of Italy. She is co-author of over 66 scientific papers, eight book chapters, four patents and was invited speaker in several national and international conferences.

1. Introduction to textile pollution Part 1: Environmental Problems 2. Microfibre methodologies for the field and laboratory. 3. Animals and microplastics: ingestion, transport, breakdown, and trophic transfer 4. Clothes encounters of the microfibre kind: the effects of natural and synthetic textiles on organisms. 5. Toxic chemicals in textiles and the role of microplastic fibres as a source and vector for chemicals to the environment Part 2: Textile Solutions 6. Microfibre shedding from textiles during laundering: different quantification methods but common findings 7. Wastewater treatment approaches to remove microplastics: microfibres incidence and fate 8. Degradation of fibrous microplastics in the marine environment 9. Sourcing and re-sourcing end-of-use textiles 10. Innovative approaches to mitigate microfibre pollution 11. Policies and perspectives on regulating microplastic fibre pollution 12. Summary