Fibers from wet wipes can leach into fertilizers if flushed down the toilet.
Linda Kennedy / Alamy
Natural fibers, increasingly used in wet wipes, could actually be more harmful to health. environment than the plastic-heavy synthetic fibers they are designed to replace.
Viscose and lyocell, made from wood cellulose, are commonly used in wet wipes and clothing in place of fibers such as polyester, which is primarily a byproduct of fossil fuels.
“They are in department stores, so you can pick them up in the consumer section of your ethical conscience of fast fashion stores,” Winnie Courtene-Jones at Bangor University in the United Kingdom.
But there remains uncertainty as to whether they are really better than materials they replace. “There’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to move away from traditional, conventional fossil fuel-based plastics and replace them with alternatives, and there hasn’t been a lot of testing of these other materials,” says Courtene- Jones.
To find out more, Courtene-Jones and colleagues tested the impact of viscose, lyocell and polyester on the floor and some of the animals who live there. Wet wipes are often found in sewage treatment plants, as are microfibers that shed from clothes in washing machines. They are then unintentionally spread on the ground via sludge used as fertilizer.
The team exhibited earthworms (Stinky Eisenia) at different concentrations of viscose, lyocell and polyester in ground. About 30 percent of people exposed to high levels of polyester died after 72 hours – compared to almost 60 percent of those exposed to lyocell and 80 percent of those exposed to viscose.
When the researchers tested lower concentrations than those most commonly encountered in the real world, they found that worms exposed to viscose or lyocell reproduced less than those exposed to polyester. The reason for this is unclear, but any fibrous material could be toxic to earthworms, regardless of its composition.
“Organic fibers may be better at the time of production, because they are not based on fossil fuels, but there is no clear vision as to whether they are better at the time of degradation,” says Caroline Gauchotte Lindsay at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. “They have their place, because we still need to replace the fossil fuel industry, but it’s important to know that the message is not that they are better once they are in the environment.”
