Comprehensive Assessment of the Chemical Footprint of Yarn Dyed Fabric

The production of colorful yarn dyed fabrics consumes a lot of dyes, auxiliaries, and water. It generates a plethora of chemical pollutants and will cause potential environmental problems. Defining the chemical footprint can transform the environmental risk caused by human activities into an intuitive form of toxicity measurement. Based on the chemical footprint methodology, this article calculated and evaluated the chemical footprints of a kind of yarn dyed fabric with the USEtox model. The results revealed that sodium hydroxide caused the most severe human toxicity, and di(hydrogenated tallow) alkyl dimethyl ammonium chloride caused the most severe ecotoxicity. The comprehensive evaluation of human toxicity and ecotoxicity with life cycle assessment polygon method showed that the preshrinking process had the largest environmental load. Selecting environmentally friendly softeners in the preshrinking process can alleviate the environmental impacts caused by the production of yarn dyed fabrics.