Paper or fabric, which tissue should we choose for our health and the planet?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

As you read these lines, your nose may be under attack from a cold, flu, Covid-19 or an allergy attack, forcing you to keep tissues or paper close at hand.

You may be wondering which of these two items is more effective at preventing the spread of infection and has the least environmental impact. Is it a cloth handkerchief, which has been around since at least Roman times? Or the paper napkin, more recently developed in its contemporary form, but which has rapidly invaded our lives? The findings of scientists on this topic may surprise you. Here they are.

A Brief History of Cloth Handkerchiefs and Paper Handkerchiefs

Simple as they may be, the tissues we use to blow our noses or catch our sneezes and other coughs are the fruits of a long and complex history.

Sudarium is used among his ancestors, I^er century AD, Romans to wipe sweat from their faces or hide their mouths. Over time, pieces of the same fabric, which today we would consider handkerchiefs, were used as head coverings, veils, disguises, or even to clean hands, sanitize wounds, or stop bleeding.

Among the wealthiest sections of the population, they formed a marker of social class and good manners, especially judiciously used to get rid of phlegm. Royal families, for example, used them as outward signs of wealth and power, offering their most privileged subjects linen or silk handkerchiefs decorated with gold and silver. For example, King Henry VIII had a large collection.

Handkerchiefs were also used to express one’s feelings, whether it was to express one’s love, show one’s loyalty, or discreetly indicate one’s sexual preferences. At the end of the 19th century^E In the century, the “kerchief code”, a system of color coding and placing handkerchiefs, was used for this purpose. It is still used in LGBT+ communities today.

Paper handkerchiefs seem to have an even older origin, dating back to second-century China.^E century before However, it wasn’t until the 1920s that the paper handkerchief developed as we know it today, as a utensil for removing makeup and cleaning runny noses caused by hay fever.

For health, cloth or paper napkin?

More than 100 years ago, the cloth handkerchief was sometimes considered a “little flag of death” because of the germs it carried and its perceived tendency to contaminate the pockets in which it was left. Later, however, the argument developed, and people were recommended to use tissues, because “Coughs and sneezes spread disease”.

Today we know that nasal secretions contain viruses such as colds, which actually survive in the environment and can be transferred to various surfaces (hands, cloth or paper tissues, door handles, keyboards, etc.) where they can survive. Sometimes long after the initial contamination.

There is a risk of spreading this virus when you blow your nose into a reusable cotton tissue and then touch another object. Even if you don’t keep your used tissue in your pocket and wash it immediately, there’s a risk of contaminating surfaces you touch along the way, such as door handles or washing machines.

Things are a little different with paper tissues, as viruses on them usually don’t last as long as they do on cloth tissues. As long as you throw away tissues immediately after use and don’t leave them lying around, the risk of spreading germs to others is low.

Another question that arises is the effectiveness of paper or fabric tissues when it comes to providing a barrier for coughs and other respiratory projections. Certainly, basic clothing protection, such as a handkerchief or bandana, is capable of trapping phlegm, as is a cloth handkerchief. However, some studies have shown that they do not effectively filter respiratory aerosols and are less effective at preventing the inhalation of certain pollutants, pathogens or small airborne particles.

And for the planet, paper or fabric?

The American company Ecosystem Analytics compared the environmental impact of reusable cotton tissues by conducting a life cycle analysis, an evaluation method aimed at measuring the environmental impacts of products and services. To do this, it considered four types of environmental impacts associated with production, transport, use and disposal:

• Effects on climate change (sum of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, nitrous oxide and CFCs, fluorinated gases);

• impact on ecosystem quality (chemical pollution of soil and water);

• effects on human health (carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic toxicity to humans);

• Resource impacts (total energy requirements for non-renewable energy and mineral extraction).

The verdict? In all four parameters, the effect of cotton tissue was five to seven times higher than the equivalent paper tissue. The biggest difference in performance was related to the stage of production of each of these products, rather than their use or disposal.

If you still want to use fabric handkerchiefs, it is better to opt for organic cotton, which has a lower ecological footprint than standard cotton produced in the same place. However, since organic cotton production has a lower yield than its conventional counterpart, a larger area of ​​agricultural land is required to produce an equivalent quantity, which also increases the environmental impact.

To have a less guilty conscience when blowing your nose, choosing tissues made from recycled materials can be a solution. In fact, their production is accompanied by low emissions of greenhouse gases. Blowing your nose with paper tissues made from recycled materials that you dispose of properly after use (and that you don’t keep in your pocket) is therefore better from both a health and environmental standpoint. ‘Environment.

But these handkerchiefs have a drawback: they don’t have the same panache or the same versatility as their fine fabric ancestors.

Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist at EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, and Hester Joyce, Associate Professor in Creative Arts, La Trobe University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.