Table 1.
Household ownership of electric clothes dryers in select countries.
Fig 1.
Images taken of the dryer vents and lint traps used in this study showing vent and lint trap screen dimensions for the electric clothes dryers at Site 1 (A and B) and Site 2 (C and D).
Fig 2.
A-B) Surface snow sample collection, C) Dryer vent exhaust collection D) Example of lint captured in bag during dryer cycle, E) Removal of lint from bag by hand, and F) Removal of remaining fibers on bag with tape.
Fig 3.
A) Example of pink polyester fibers collected from fleece blanket used in this study, B) Example of pink fiber from fleece blanket found in snow sample, C) Comparison between pink fiber from fleece blanket and darker pink fiber identified as “other” and D) Example of fibers observed in snow sample.
Fig 4.
A comparison of the fibers extracted from the pink fleece blanket used in this study (A) and darker pink fibers observed in tap water and snow samples identified as “other” (B).
Fig 5.
Pink fiber distribution for each dryer cycle at Site 1 (top row) and Site 2 (bottom row) locations.
Wind speed and direction are indicated by black arrows, unless there was no wind detected/forecast on that sampling date. Plots in which no fibers were found are not shown.
Fig 6.
Distribution of other anthropogenic colored fibers (synthetic and non-synthetic) for each dryer cycle at Site 1 (top row) and Site 2 (bottom row) locations.
Wind velocity and direction are indicated by black arrows, unless there was no wind detected/forecast on that sampling date.
Table 2.
Average ± SD of fibers observed in sampling plots expressed in different units for comparability with other studies.
Fig 7.
An example of lint collected in nylon mesh bags from vent exhaust for Site 1 dry cycle 1 (A), 2 (B) and 3 (C) and for Site 2 dry cycle 1 (D), 2 (E) and 3 (F).
Fig 8.
A comparison of mean weight (mg) (n = 3) of lint captured via dryer vent exhaust and in dryer lint trap per dry cycle at the two sites (error bars represent standard deviation).
Fig 9.
Examples of lint captured in dryer lint traps from Site 1 (A = dry cycle 1, B = dry cycle 2, C = dry cycle 3) and from Site 2 (D = dry cycle 1, E = dry cycle 2, F = dry cycle 3).
Fig 10.
Accumulation of pink fibers from all three dryer cycles at site 2.