The use of chemicals in the textile industry has been widely investigated. This study used an improved method with the USEtox model to assess the environmental impacts of chemical pollutants discharged by the textile industry. The environmental impacts attributed to the discharged chemical pollutants were ranked using a quantity analysis method and a toxicity analysis method. The rankings of the two methods were compared by calculating Spearman’s correlation coefficients and outliers. The results showed that the human health and ecological hazards potential were mainly caused by heavy metals. The rankings of the environmental impacts calculated with the quantity analysis method were different from those calculated with the toxicity analysis method. Cadmium, hexachlorobenzene and mercury caused severe human and ecological hazards with a small volume of emissions. Zinc and hexavalent chromium were highly toxic chemical pollutants, which could cause severe human health and ecological hazards potential. These five kinds of chemical pollutants should be preferentially controlled to mitigate the environmental impacts caused by chemical pollutants discharged from the textile industry.

The chemical pollutants discharged in the production processes of textile products cause severe impact on the environment. The chemical footprint (ChF) methodology provides a new way to quantify the toxicity impacts caused by chemical pollutants. ChF does well in identifying priority chemical pollutants and helping enterprises to select greener chemicals to reduce the environment impacts. In this study, the ChF of woollen yarn were assessed with the data that collected from the production processes. The results showed that the ChF of dyeing process (4.10E+06 l) accounted for the largest proportion, because a large number of auxiliaries were used in the dyeing process to prevent uneven dyeing and colour difference, followed by scouring (7.79E+05 l) and finishing (8.11E+03 l). Among all the discharged chemical pollutants, polyoxyethylene nonyl phenyl ether (1.37E+06 l) caused the most ecotoxicity severe impact on the environment due to its high bioaccumulation and high toxicity to ecosystem, followed by sulfuric acid (1.03E+06 l). Sodium chloride and hydrogen peroxide were the two substances that caused the least environmental load. The overall uncertainty caused by toxicity prediction data accounting for 20.2% of the total ChF, and the uncertainty of the scouring process was the most. The results are referable for wool textiles producers to enhance the textile chemicals management.

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The textile industry contributes a lot to China’s economy in history and present. However, it also causes serious impacts on the environment. Environmental prices methodology was proposed to convert various environmental impacts into corresponding social marginal value and it can be applied for the evaluation of the environmental loads. This study applied environmental prices methodology to calculate the social marginal value of the caused environmental impacts in China’s textile industry during the period from 2001 to 2015. The results showed that the minimum value of caused environmental impacts was €9.556 billion and the maximum value was €16.599 billion. Among the three sub-industries of China’s textile industry, Manufacture of Textile had the highest value, followed by Manufacture of Chemical Fibers, and Manufacture of Textile, Wearing Apparel and Accessories. The value of greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emission was the largest. The value of ammonia nitrogen in wastewater was the largest and followed by the values of COD, As, cyanide, Hg, Pb and Cd. An in-depth analysis of the results indicated that the social marginal value of the textile industry closely related to the scale of the industry, the international market and government policies.