Assessing environmental impact of NO and SO emissions in textiles production with chemical footprint.

Air pollution is a major concern of the new civilized world due to its adverse impact on human health and environment. As typical air pollutants, nitrogen oxide (NO) and sulfur dioxide (SO) not only pollute the atmosphere by forming acid rain and particulate matter, but are also harmful to the human respiratory system. Significant emissions of NO and SO in the production phases make the textile industry under enormous environmental pressure. Chemical footprint (ChF) is an effective method for transforming the potential environmental risks of pollutant emissions into an intuitive form of toxicity. In this study, we present a ChF assessment method for NO and SO emissions from textiles production. For this purpose, we adopt the USEtox model and calculate the relevant characterization factors (CFs) by considering the physicochemical properties and toxicity of NO and SO. The textile industry in Zhejiang Province, China, is chosen as a case study to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed ChF assessment methodology. Results indicate that ChF caused by NO emission in Zhejiang's textile industry is approximately eight times larger than that caused by SO emission. The four sub-sectors of Zhejiang's textile industry (textile manufacturing sector; textile wearing apparel, footware, and caps manufacturing sector; leather, fur, feather and related products manufacturing sector; chemical fibers manufacturing sector) also have similar proportional distributions of ChFs. Besides, the textile manufacturing sector has the largest ChF, accounting for 73% of the total ChF caused by NO and SO emissions.