The Hindu Business Line : Contamination of cotton falling, says survey

THE cotton contamination survey for 2005 conducted by the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF) has pointed towards a fall in the contamination levels of cotton processed for textile manufacture across countries.

The falling contamination levels is marked for the first time since 1997, noted the ITMF's latest survey.

The reduction in the levels of contamination is seen on all the three counts, namely serious, moderate and least or insignificant contaminations. The overall level of contamination of cotton in the current survey fell to 22 per cent from the 2003 survey figure of 26 per cent.

Of all cases of cottons evaluated in 2005, 7 per cent were found to be seriously contaminated (by 16 different sources of foreign matter) as against 8 per cent seen in the 2003 survey.

The level of moderately contaminated cottons in the current survey also fell to 15 per cent as compared to 18 per cent in the previous survey.

This has, according to the survey, left the insignificant/least contaminated cottons rising to 78 per cent as against the 2003 survey finding of 74 per cent.

Foreign matter, stickiness and seed coat fragments in raw cotton are the major contaminants.

The ITMF contamination survey data being basically arithmetic averages, the extent of contamination is illustrated only by the results for the individual contaminants, which range from 5 per cent for `tar' (in the 2003 survey it is 6 per cent) to 40 per cent of all cottons processed being either moderately or seriously contaminated by organic matter, namely leaves, feathers, paper, leather (down from 50 per cent in 2003).

Other spoilers include fabrics made of cotton, strings made of woven plastic, plastic film, jute, sand and dust. While cotton originating from Turkey, India, Paraguay, Nigeria, Syria and Central Asia fit into most contaminated descriptions, the cottons from Israel, Senegal, the US, Zimbabwe, Australia and Togo were found to be clean.

As for stickiness, the 2005 survey has revealed that 17 per cent of all cottons evaluated showed presence of stickiness, which is significantly lower compared to 21 per cent found in 2003.

There has also been improvement in the cottons affected by the presence of seed-coat fragments. The seed coat fragments dropped significantly to 37 per cent as compared to 44 per cent recorded in the 2003 survey.

The cottons most affected by this phenomenon are those originating from Nigeria, India, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The cottons from Zimbabwe, Paraguay, Ivory Coast, the US, Egypt, Australia and China, besides Israel, bore least prevalence of seed coat fragments (less than 20 per cent).

The ITMF survey is carried out every other year and the 2005 survey is the ninth edition. The cottons evaluated for the survey covered 68 cotton varieties used by 152 spinning mills located in 18 countries.

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