Control of microorganisms on tanned leather:: From fungicide to antimicrobial function leather

To inhibit the microbial growth on tanned leathers including wet blue, crust leathers, finished leathers and their goods (shoes, garments, bags, etc.), fungicides are usually applied during various leather-making processes. Under the situation of increasingly strict environmental legislation, all kinds of ecofriendly fungicides were explored recently to replace the currently used noxious ones in leather industry. Meanwhile, a non-traditional new type of leather, called antimicrobial function leather, attracted more and more attention from leather chemists and technologists, because of its tempting antimicrobial protection provided and wide application prospects in many fields such as medical materials, health products, daily products, public transport vehicles, and so on. Based on the literatures published in the past decade, especially in the past five years, this review systematically and comprehensively summarizes current status and development trend about leather fungicides and antimicrobial function leather. The discussed antimicrobials contain traditional organic synthetic fungicides with small molecular weight, natural essential oils, macromolecular polymers and chitosan derivatives, and nano-inorganic antimicrobials (nanosilver, nano-ZnO, nano TiO2, nano-SiO2, etc.). Finally, several proposals are addressed for the development of new leather fungicides and antimicrobial function leather, and especially, a new viewpoint, in which the antimicrobial leather is prepared based on various tanning mechanisms, is demonstrably presented to solve the problem of loose combination between antimicrobial substances and leather fibers.