Take a look at the clothes you are wearing. Chances are, they’re not environmentally friendly: made in China, Vietnam, and Thailand from resource-intensive fabric (the fashion world is not famously known for its sustainability and eco-credentials). Now imagine if the clothes you are wearing, indeed, all the clothes you own, could play a major part in cleaning up air pollution. Fast forward two years, and they could very well be doing just that.

Using a laundry additive infused with Catalytic Clothing (CatClo), an ultrafine nanoparticle version of titanium dioxide (TiO2), consumers could soon be cleaning up city air through their clothes.

Similar to technology already used in self-cleaning glass, in this case, the nanoparticle is triggered through a combination of body heat and light, turning air borne pollutants such as nitric oxide (NOx) produced by industry and motor vehicles into an inert bleach. This can then be washed out of the clothing in the usual laundry process.

Co-founder of Catalytic Clothing and Professor of Fashion and Science at The London College of Fashion, Helen Storey MBE, tells me that this ‘technology to come’ had humble beginnings: “The idea came out of a collaboration with Professor Tony Ryan, PVC Faculty for Science at Sheffield University. We had been working together since 2005 on a project entitled Wonderland [in which Storey and Ryan created ‘disappearing dresses’ from used packaging that dissolved on contact with water]. We were in a Wonderland workshop for secondary school students in 2008, sharing what it is like for a scientist and artist to work together, when a 14-year old asked why we didn’t take more advantage of what already exists regarding ambient energy and environmental cleanup. Tony had to dash off to a meeting, but had a ‘eureka’ moment when he calculated on the back of the meeting’s agenda the surface area of the clothes he was wearing that day. He came dashing back and the idea of using the surface area of us found a new purpose.”

Initially developed as part of the 18-month ‘Extreme collaboration delivering solutions for a failing world’ initiative, the technology received £202,000 of funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and had its first demonstration at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was here that ‘WENDY’, a 14 metre-high construction covered in nylon sprayed with CatClo, removed the equivalent nitric oxide as that produced by approximately 260 cars, in just 10 weeks.

From there, Storey says, the idea to bind the additive to fabric permanently through a washing powder or liquid detergent came about. By washing the catalytic converter into your clothing (with the effects lasting between 10 to 20 washes), your outfit could be permanently cleaning up the air.

As there are more jeans in the UK than people, this is one area that CatClo is targeting. According to CatClo, one person wearing a pair of catalysed jeans can remove between a gramme and two grammes of NOx out of the atmosphere a day, but many participants are needed to produce a significant effect on air pollution levels. If half of the population of Sheffield were wearing catalysed jeans, then the city’s air pollution levels could be brought down by at least 10 per cent, into the safe limit of NOx (40 milligrammes per cubic metre).

The answer to delivering the product to such a large market, Storey tells me, is through laundry products: “CatClo technology now requires a new business model to take it to market, in order that it can be scaled up to the level required to have a genuine impact on human health.

“We have deliberately not put any patent applications in place, in the hope that the major brands then feel free to create their own ‘recipe’ to deliver in their own way to their global market share. So just like fluoride in water, our hope is that this will eventually become a ‘given’ in all laundry products.”

This all sounds too good to be true. And indeed, it may well be. Although titanium dioxide has been used in European products since the 1960s – mainly as a whitening agent in paint and food colouring – this new nanoparticle form of TiO2 could have negative health effects, Professor Richard Handy, Director at the Ecotoxicology Research and Innovation Centre at Plymouth University, tells me.

“The literature on the effects of ultrafine TiO2 is still emerging and there’s still no consensus on all the adverse effects of nano TiO2. The research that we’ve done from laboratory studies has shown that if you expose fishes to TiO2 (either the traditional material or the new, nanoscale version of it), it is toxic to them. We have found so far pathologies in the brains of fishes from TiO2, changes in the muscle structure and swimming performance, as well as changes in the spleen function (part of the immune system) and modifications in inflammation-type responses in the kidneys.

“If we can demonstrate pathologies in the body structures of fishes, which are vertebrate animals”, says Handy, “then it would seem logical that there should be some similar concerns for the same body systems in humans.”

Although skin is a good barrier to most chemicals, including nanomaterials, Handy warns that TiO2 can enter the bloodstream through ingestion and inhalation and affect health. “In theory, there is a risk of inhalation from fibres and dust from the catalysed clothing. We know that ultrafine TiO2 is a respiratory hazard, and does cause some very severe lung function problems at high dose rates of exposure. The question is, would the amount of fibre and dust from the clothing have a measurable risk for a member of the public? That’s something very difficult to quantify. But in principle, breathing in TiO2 dust is not good for you, and everyone is fairly agreed on that point.”

Handy also questions the health effects of TiO2 entering the water system. “Concerning TiO2, the main concerns are ingestion, so if the TiO2 gets into the water system and we ingest it, there may be a public health risk (as well as an environmental impact) that could accumulate over time and would need managing. So the main concern would be, what are the lifetime effects of long-term accumulation of TiO2? Potentially, if you gradually absorb tiny amounts over a period of time, it could build up to produce a toxic effect. It would be very helpful to have some long-term studies to help us understand what those long-term risks are.”

CatClo admits that TiO2 particles will enter the waste water system from the washing process, but claims that TiO2 is an ‘inert, white mineral’, and only an effective photocatalyst when it is ‘in the form of nanoparticles that can see light’. CatClo also says that any escaping particles would ‘most likely’ be in a mass already and will ‘definitely form into groups in the water treatment process’ and thus be extracted. In the event of a water treatment system using UV, CatClo says that the light level will be too low to activate any catalytic activity.

Rest assured however, manufacturers have to pass a suite of tests relating to environmental and health protection before any new product can be put on the market, and even Handy sees no reason why people shouldn’t buy the catalytic converter if it passes all the tests. “There is risk in all new technologies”, says Storey, “but CatClo will not, and cannot, become commercially viable unless it passes all the regulatory tests. These would be undertaken by the commercial partners who take it to market.”

CatClo may still be in its infancy, but with major manufacturers such as Ecover interested in the technology, pollution fighting clothes could soon be part of our wardrobes and lives.