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Fibers from synthetic textiles are another source of secondary MPs in the environments (Figure 1.3). Synthetic fibers are made from petroleum through polymerization, polycondensation, or polyaddition processes (Astrom 2016). In 2010, total synthetic fiber production was 49.6 million tons, accounting for 60% of the world's fiber production (Essel et al. 2015). Synthetic textiles can be used in clothes, furniture, geotextiles, cloth, sports, packing, toys, construction, and agriculture. Shedding of textiles relies on the textile types, the yarn and texture type, and the fiber types involved. According to Astrom (2016), most fibers are shed from synthetic fleece and microfleece. A synthetic fleece coat can shed about 1900 fibers with each wash (Browne et al. 2011). These authors also concluded that using detergents causes more shedding compared with using only water. The average size of fibers ranged from 5.0 to 7.8 mm in length, and 11.9 to 17.7 μm in diameter (Napper and Thompson 2016). Compared to other MPs detected in environments, such as pellets or fragments, fibers have a higher surface‐to‐volume ratio; therefore, they can attract more chemicals than other MPs (Astrom 2016).