Vegetable Ingredients of Dusts in Textile and Nontextile Cotton Industries

¹ From the Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Tex.

The objective was to determine if garnetting and raw cotton dusts differed in botanical composition. Estimates of dust composition were based on the contents of gross trash in cotton raw materials and the potential of each gross trash component to be converted into <10 µm particulate by a laboratory abrasion test. All types of garnetting dusts are predicted to contain a lower percent content of leaflike material than raw cotton dust. Garnetting dusts arising from linter-polyester blends are estimated to contain only 20 to 25 percent of the concentration of leaflike ingredients predicted to be present in raw cotton dusts. The low prevalence of byssinosis reported in the garnetting industry may be explained, in part, by the relatively low percent content of leaflike particulate in this cotton dust.