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by cheesecakegood
40 days ago
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I guess a little bit of background is helpful, which most people don’t realize, about carpet production. A lot (a LOT) of carpet is some variant of polyester since it’s just a really nice durability + cost + stain resistance mix (although the latter is one of its big weaknesses comparatively, important to note). Thus there is significant demand for stain guard options. Compounded on top of that is because although you can dye the polyester before it is extruded, this is the firm minority of carpet produced. Maybe a quarter or less? Usually you will dye it before spinning it into yarn or before tufting it (weaving it into the backing basically). However, it is often cheaper especially for solid carpet to essentially dunk the whole finished carpet into a vat for dyeing, or run it through a glorified conveyor belt to do much the same. I’d hazard a decent guess that the latter two methods are the worst offenders for pollution for obvious reasons. What’s a bit of a pity then is that it seems to me that this isn’t really inevitable (although if we stop entirely that’s a perfect recipe for some other country to undercut us even if they inherit the long term dangers too). With that said, the CRI (Carpet and Rug Institute) is almost the epitome of what you’d imagine an industry group to be. And 3M/DuPont are, well, you know. So I’m sure the article doesn’t really exaggerate there. Finally I’d say that the upshot for all of us should be that regulation and pressure work. There was a calculation made whether intentionally or not, explicitly or implicitly, that if this came out to be bad then the big chemical companies could be blamed (and could further be reliably counted on to have engaged in outright unethical activity that makes blaming them a somewhat valid strategy too). Source: sold carpet for a few years and was actually curious about the industry unlike many of my peers |
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The treatments like stain master are/were the problem, not the dye.
Carpet is a wonderful product, even polys. It’s good we’re having a conversation about it, but vinyl flooring has far out passed carpet , and it is full of awful carcinogens, made in china, not disclosed, secret recipes. But , it can be unstable and release into your home / office / work place