Japanese textile industry began to ban azo dyes

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of global industrialization, international attention to the continuous deterioration of the quality of the global environment and the imbalance of ecological balance has been increasing. In the industries that cause environmental pollution, the textile printing and dyeing industry has been regarded as one of the highly polluting industries due to the need to use a large number of chemical synthesis products such as dyes and auxiliaries. Among dyes and dyes used in the dyeing of textile products, aromatic amines, which are intermediates of some dyes, are regarded as suspicious carcinogens by many countries. Dozens of dyes containing this substance have been listed as prohibited.

On July 15, 1994, the German government issued a regulation prohibiting the use of 20 aromatic amines and their corresponding 118 dyes, which has caused widespread concern in countries around the world. At present, in the European Union and China, more than 30 countries and regions have established relevant standards for the limitation of the types and content of chemicals in textiles, involving the ban on the use of more than 20 aromatic amines and more than 300 related dyes. Recently, there have been reports from Japan that in order to protect consumer safety, the Japanese textile industry has also begun to plan to restrict the import and use of textile and apparel products containing banned azo dyes.

Although Japan did not have relevant laws to restrict related hazardous chemicals, the selection, restriction methods, and methods of measurement and detection of harmful substances were all actively under consideration for the health and hygiene of consumers. From the news from Japan, the Japanese textile industry will soon announce its requirements for banned azo dye testing. In order to help companies better cope with relevant requirements, the following is a simple analysis of what is azo dyes and related test mechanisms.

An azo dye refers to a dye having at least one azo structure in the chemical structural formula, wherein an azo group is often linked to one or more aromatic ring systems to form a conjugate system and serves as a color body of a dye, and is distributed almost in all colour. It is one of the most widely used synthetic dyes, not only for printing and dyeing textiles, but also for leather, paper, food and other dyeing. It should be noted that not all azo dyes are banned, and only those azo dyes that have been banned will release more than 20 types of carcinogenic aromatic amines specified by regulations.