Setting out to find an answer to this question, the partners in the present project have evaluated several strategies to reduce the leaching of OBAs from whitened textiles. The chosen strategy of work focused on commercially available OBAs by studying chemical structures and building blocks for OBA to establish knowledge on their chemical nature, building blocks, performance as well as health and environmental effects, and a method for comparative evaluation of the leaching of OBAs was developed to assess alterna-tives in a product development setting.
A list of OBAs was assessed based on supplier information, knowledge of OBAs and their building blocks as well as a health and environmental screening to select and deselect potential alternatives. One alternative was chosen for detailed studies with respect to properties such as affinity, leaching and smudging in addition to financial evaluations.
The studies revealed no definitive conclusions with respect to leaching; however, optimization of the OBA dosage has a potential to reduce leaching of the alternative OBA to values lower than the values achieved in the studies and, as hypothesized, lower than the leaching of current OBAs.