With the progress of human beings and the development of society, people’s requirements for textiles are not only simple functions, but also pay more attention to their safety and health, green environmental protection and natural ecology. Nowadays, when people advocate natural and green consumption, the safety of textiles has attracted more and more people’s attention. The question of whether textiles are harmful to human body has become one of the key areas that people pay attention to in addition to medicine and food.
Textile refers to the natural fiber and chemical fiber as raw materials, through spinning, weaving, dyeing and other processing technology or sewing, composite and other technology and made of products. Including clothing textiles, decorative textiles, industrial textiles.
Clothing textiles include:(1) all kinds of clothing; (2) all kinds of textile fabrics used in the production of clothing; (3) lining, padding, filling, decorative thread, sewing thread and other textile accessories.
Decorative textiles include:(1) indoor articles – curtains (curtains, curtain), table textiles (napkins, table cloth), furniture textiles (cloth art sofa, furniture cover), interior decoration (bed ornaments, carpets); (2) Bedding (bedspread, quilt cover, pillowcase, pillow towel, etc.); (3) Outdoor articles (tents, umbrellas, etc.).
I .Safety performance of textiles
(1) Product appearance safety design requirements. The main indicators are:
1.Dimensional stability: it is mainly divided into the dimensional change rate of dry cleaning and the dimensional change rate of washing. It refers to the dimensional change rate of textile after washing or dry cleaning and then drying. The quality of stability directly affects the cost performance of textiles and the wearing effect of clothing.
2.Adhesive lining peeling strength: in suits, coats and shirts, the fabric is covered with a layer of nonwoven adhesive lining or woven adhesive lining, so that the fabric has the corresponding stiffness and resilience, while making consumers not easy to deformation and out of shape in the process of wearing, playing the role of “skeleton” of a garment. At the same time, it is also necessary to maintain the adhesive force between the adhesive lining and the fabric after wearing and washing.
3.Pilling: Pilling refers to the degree of pilling of the fabric after friction. The appearance of the fabric becomes worse after pilling, which directly affects the aesthetics.
4.Stitch slippage or yarn slippage: the maximum slippage of yarn away from the finger seam when the finger seam is stressed and stretched. Generally refers to the slime crack degree of the main seams of garment products such as sleeve seam, armhole seam, side seam and back seam. The slippage degree could not reach the standard index, which reflected the improper configuration of the warp and weft yarn in the lining material and the small tightness, which directly affected the appearance of wearing and even could not be worn.
5.Breaking, tearing or jacking, breaking strength: breaking strength guide the fabric to bear the maximum breaking force; Tear strength refers to the woven fabric is an object, hook, local stress rupture and crack formation, yarn or fabric of local grip, so that the fabric was torn in two, and is often referred to as tear: bursting, burst pointer fabric mechanical parts summoned the expansion and burst phenomenon, these indicators is unqualified, directly affect the use effect and service life.
6.Fiber content: denotes the fiber composition and quantity contained in the textile. Fiber content is the important reference information that instructs consumer to buy a product and one of the important factors that decide product value, some deliberately pass for shod, pass for fake, some mark at random, confuse concept, deceive consumer.
7. wear resistance: refers to the degree of fabric resistance to wear, wear is a major aspect of fabric damage, it directly affects the durability of the fabric.
8.Appearance sewing requirements: including measurement of specifications, surface defects, sewing, ironing, thread, stains and color difference, etc., to evaluate appearance by counting defects. In particular, infants as a vulnerable group, has always been our focus to protect the object, infants used textiles is a direct contact with children’s daily necessities, its safety, comfort, parents and the whole society are the focus of attention. For example, the requirements of products with zippers, the length of the rope, the size of the collar, the sewing position of the trademark durability label, the requirements of the decoration, and the requirements of the printing part all involve the safety.
(2)Used fabrics, accessories whether there are harmful substances. The main indicators are：
Formaldehyde content:
1.Formaldehyde is often used in the resin finishing of pure textile fiber and blended fabric and the finalizing finishing of some garment products. It has the functions of free ironing, shrinkproof, wrinkle-proof and easy decontamination. Made clothing textiles containing excessive formaldehyde, formaldehyde in the process of people wearing will be gradually released, breathing and skin contact through the human body, the formaldehyde in the body of respiratory tract mucous membrane and skin produce intense stimulation, cause related disease and may cause cancer, long-term intake of low concentration formaldehyde can cause loss of appetite, weight loss, weakness, the symptom such as insomnia, The toxicity to infants is manifested as asthma, tracheitis, chromosomal abnormalities, and decreased resistance.
2.PH Value
PH value is a commonly used index that indicates the strength of acid and alkalinity, generally between 0 ~ 14 value. The human skin carries a layer of weak acid to prevent disease from entering. Therefore, textiles, especially products that come into direct contact with the skin, have a protective effect on the skin if the pH value can be controlled within the range of neutral to weak acid. If not, it can irritate the skin, causing skin damage, bacteria, and disease.
3.Color Fastness
Colour fastness refers to the ability of a dyed or printed textile to retain its original colour and lustre (or to not fade) under the action of various external factors during the process of dyeing, printing or use. Color fastness is not only related to the quality of textile products, but also directly related to the health and safety of human body. Textile products, dyes or pigments with low color fastness can be easily transferred to the skin, and the harmful organic compounds and heavy metal ions contained in them can be absorbed by the human body through the skin. In light cases, they can make people itch; in severe cases, they can lead to erythema and papules on the skin surface, and even induce cancer. In particular, the salivary and perspiration color fastness index of infant products is particularly important. Infants and children can absorb color through saliva and perspiration, and harmful dyes in textiles will cause adverse effects on infants and children.
4.Peculiar Smell
Substandard textiles are often accompanied by some odor, the existence of odor indicates that there are excessive chemical residues on the textile, which is the easiest indicator for consumers to judge. After opening, a textile may be judged to have an odor if it smells of one or more of musty, high boiling range petroleum, kerosene, fish, or aromatic hydrocarbons.
5.Banned Azo Dyes
Banned azo dye itself and there is no direct carcinogenic effect, but its under certain conditions, especially the poor color fastness, part of the dye will be transferred to the person’s skin from the textile, in the process of the normal metabolism of human body secretions of biological catalysis under reduction of aromatic amine, gradually absorbed by human body through the skin, cause the body disease, and even the original DNA structure can change the human body, Induces cancer and so on.
6.Disperse Dyes
Allergic dyestuff refers to certain dyestuff that can cause skin, mucous membrane or respiratory tract allergy of human or animal. At present, a total of 27 kinds of sensitized dyes have been found, including 26 kinds of disperse dyes and 1 kind of acid dyes. Disperse dyes are often used for dyeing pure or blended products of polyester, polyamide and acetate fibers.
7.Heavy metal content
The use of metal complexing dyes is an important source of heavy metals in textiles and natural plant fibres may also absorb heavy metals from contaminated soil or air during the growth and processing process. In addition, clothing accessories such as zippers, buttons may also contain free heavy metal substances. Excessive heavy metal residues in textiles will cause serious cumulative toxicity once absorbed by human body through skin.
8.Pesticide Residue
Mainly exists in natural fiber (cotton) pesticides, pesticide residue in textiles are generally stable structure, difficult to oxidation, decomposition, toxicity, absorbed by human body through the skin to accumulate stability exists in the body’s tissues, as well as liver, kidney, heart tissue accumulation, such as interference normal secretion of synthesis in the body. Release, metabolism, etc.
9.Flammability of general clothing textiles
Although there are more than ten textile combustion performance test method, but the principle of testing can be divided into two categories: one is to test the light textile sample in different concentrations of oxygen, nitrogen, the percentage of the minimum necessary to sustain the combustion in the mixed gases, oxygen content (also known as the limit oxygen index), and the limit oxygen index said the combustion performance of textiles.In general, the lower the limit oxygen index, the more likely the textile is to burn.The second is to observe and test the textile flame point and then occur combustion (including smoke combustion).Under the test principle, there are many indexes to characterize the combustion performance of textiles. There are qualitative indexes to describe the combustion characteristics, such as whether the sample is burned, melting, carbonization, pyrolysis, shrinkage, crimping and melt dropping, etc.There are also quantitative indicators to describe combustion characteristics, such as combustion length or width (or combustion rate), ignition time, continuation time, smoldering time, flame spread time, damaged area and the number of flame exposure, etc.
Post time: Jun-10-2021