Clothing & Textiles
Small volumes of formaldehyde-based resins are used in the textiles industry to help bind dyes and pigments to fabrics and prevent the colours from running when clothing is washed.
In addition to preventing colour loss, urea (UF) and melamine formaldehyde (MF) resins are sometimes applied as a finishing to make clothes wrinkle and stain resistant.
Formaldehyde is also a building block chemical used in the production of other substances which are then used to make textiles, such as 1,4-Butanediol, or BDO. BDO is an intermediate in the production of tertahydrofuran (THF) resins which are used to produce spandex fibers and similar types of sportswear materials.