Microplastics Are Being Released in Your Home. The #1 Source Will Shock You.

What happens in the laundry room doesn’t stay there.

Clean Clothes, Dirty Secret

You pull a warm sweatshirt out of the dryer and bury your face in it. It smells like lavender detergent, feels fuzzy from fabric softener, and still holds a little heat from the cycle. But as your favorite hoodie tumbles around in your washer and dryer, it’s quietly doing something else too. It’s releasing thousands of microscopic plastic fibers into the air and down the drain. Microplastics are exactly what they sound like, tiny plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size, and often smaller than a grain of salt or the width of a human hair. These fibers are so small that they pass through water systems, ending up in our oceans, our food, and even our bodies.

Studies Find The #1 Source of Microplastics in Your Closet

You might expect microplastics to come from plastic bottles, food wrappers, or even car tires. But the largest known source of microplastic pollution in the ocean is much less obvious: washing synthetic clothes like leggings, shirts, and jackets. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that laundry accounts for 35% of all microplastic pollution in the ocean. But according to Gaylarde et al., that figure only includes fibers that reach the ocean through water and doesn’t even count the number of microplastics released into the air from clothes during wear or drying. This means the true percentage of microplastic pollution from laundry is likely even higher than 35%.

Figure 1: Plastic fibers retrieved from (left) Guanabara Bay, Brazil; (right) the drum of a washing machine in a UK household; the pen tip is around 0.2 mm across (Gaylarde et al., 2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07105

Scientists have mapped out exactly how this can happen, and it starts with something called fuzz formation. First, fibers begin to poke out from the fabric surface through everyday wear. As the clothes move around in the machine, those loose fibers get shaken and pulled, gradually stretching further away from the surface. Some of them tangle together into tiny knots called pills, like the ones you might see on an old sweater. Eventually, those pills break off, carrying loose plastic fibers with them.

Figure 2: The process of microfiber formation and release during washing of textiles (Gaylarde et al., 2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07105

Millions of Fibers from a Single Load

So how much plastic are your clothes really shedding? In a real-world study by De Falco et al., researchers used a standard household washing machine to wash full loads of laundry and found that each wash released between 640,000 and 1.5 million microfibers. To understand what clothes shed the most, a second study by Akyildiz et al. tested ten different synthetic fabrics in a controlled lab setup using a standardized 40-degree Celsius wash. The fabrics varied in material, thickness, and weave, and were washed in two phases: a 10-minute pre-wash followed by a 35-minute soaping and rinsing cycle. The results showed that woven fabrics released significantly more fibers than knitted ones, and that shedding increased with both fabric thickness and weight. Among materials tested, acrylic and recycled polyester shed the most, with the worst being woven acrylic releasing 2,405 microfibers in a single test.

Figure 3: Microfibers released (expressed in mg/kg, Ma±SD, n=2) from BT, a 100% polyester t-shirt, RT a 100% polyester t-shirt, GB, a 100% polyester blouse, and GT, a top with a 100% polyester front and 50% cotton blend back (De Falco et al., 2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-4302

From the Washer to the Waterways

Once microfibers are released during washing, many people assume they just get filtered out at the wastewater treatment plant. Unfortunately, even modern treatment systems can miss large numbers of microplastic fibers. While the most advanced plants are designed to capture up to 99 percent solid waste, microfibers are often so small that they pass through standard filtration systems and are not counted as solid waste. These microplastics slip through the traditional filters and flow directly into rivers, lakes, and oceans. The fibers that do get captured usually end up in sewage sludge, often spread on farmland as fertilizer. This means those hidden microplastics are able to make their way into our soil and possibly into our crops.

Should You Be Concerned?

Although we do not yet fully understand the health effects of consuming microplastics, research has already linked them to inflammation, hormone disruption, and the potential to carry toxic chemicals into the body. These concerns are especially relevant when microplastics break down into even smaller particles, called nanoplastics, which can enter organs and tissues more easily.

So, the next time you fold your favorite hoodie, pull fresh sheets from the dryer, or toss a load of laundry into the wash, it’s worth remembering that clean clothes might come with more than just a fresh scent. Microplastics are making their way out of our homes and into the world, not because of something we’re doing wrong, but because synthetic fabrics and modern laundry systems are built this way. Avoiding your favorite sweatshirt or giving up the dryer isn’t a practical solution. But understanding how microfibers are released is a critical first step toward solving a problem we can no longer afford to overlook.

How You Can Help

CLEANR’s Premium Microplastic Filter for washing machines captures 90%+ of microplastics from the largest source of microplastic pollution (your laundry), preventing them from entering our environment.

CLEANR’s Filter can hook up to your existing washing machine and start capturing microplastics before they reach out water.

Learn More!

About CLEANR

CLEANR builds best-in-class microplastic filters for washing machines that effortlessly remove the largest source of microplastics into the environment. Its technology, VORTX, represents a breakthrough in filtration, with a patent-pending design that is inspired by nature and proven to outperform conventional filtration technologies by over 300%. The company is building a platform filter technology that enables product manufacturers and business customers to materially reduce their microplastic emissions from impacted in-bound and out-bound fluid streams, including residential and commercial washing machine wastewater, in-home water systems, wastewater treatment, textile manufacturing effluents, industrial wastewater, and other sources. www.cleanr.life

Sources:

Akyildiz, S. H., Fiore, S., Bruno, M., Sezgin, H., Yalcin-Enis, I., Yalcin, B., & Bellopede, R. (2024). Release of microplastic fibers from synthetic textiles during household washing. Environmental Pollution, 357, 124455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2024.124455
Gaylarde, C., Baptista-Neto, J. A., & da Fonseca, E. M. (2021). Plastic microfibre pollution: How important is clothes’ laundering? Heliyon, 7(7), e07105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07105
De Falco, F., Di Pace, E., Cocca, M., & Avella, M. (2019). The contribution of washing processes of synthetic clothes to microplastic pollution. Scientific Reports, 9, 6633. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43023-x
Ullah, S., Ahmad, S., Guo, X., Ullah, S., Ullah, S., Nabi, G., & Wanghe, K. (2023, January 16). A review of the endocrine disrupting effects of micro and nano plastic and their associated chemicals in mammals. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 13, 1084236. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2022.1084236