Review on Different Types of Clay and Their Use as Antimicrobial Agents for Textiles Treatment

Traditional uses of clay as medicine started in prehistoric times (Aboriginal times). Natural clays have been used in ancient and modern medicine, but the mechanism that makes certain clays lethal to bacterial pathogens has not been yet identified. The aim of this paper is to identify the proper clays that could be used in textile industry for improving textiles` functionality, based on the information extracted from literature. It is important, to differentiate between the properties that make a clay ‘healing’, versus what makes it ‘antibacterial’. So far, literature is abundant in reports regarding ‘healing’ clays, but, when tested against pathogens in vitro and compared to controls, they do not appear to have bactericidal properties. The studies carried out up to this point established that the physical adsorption of water and organic matter is the main feature which leads to healing properties of clays; however, the chemical interaction between clay and bacteria has received less attention. Clay properties, with potential application in medicine, have recently been started to be investigated and the results indicate that certain natural clays can have noticeable and extremely specific effects on microbial colonies. Further studies will be directed towards the characterization of the selected ‘claytextile’ pairs.