What changed

The parts are being reissued individually. The series title has moved from Textiles — Test methods for nonwovens to Nonwovens — Test methods, and the reissues have arrived over several years rather than together.

Reading the ISO/TC 38 catalogue on 19 October 2026, these parts carried a recent edition year: 4:2021, 13:2023, 14:2023, 7:2024, 5:2025, 6:2025, 8:2025 and 11:2026. These parts were still on an earlier edition: 12:2002, 10:2003, 15:2007 and 9:2008. A series that is partly rewritten and partly untouched is normal, and it is the reason a specification should cite the part and the year rather than the series alone.

Which part does what, for a towel

  • Part 1 — mass per unit area. Every GSM figure on this site is a measurement of this kind, and the part exists because nonwovens need their own sampling and specimen rules rather than the woven-textile ones.
  • Part 2 — thickness.
  • Part 3 and Part 18 — tensile strength and elongation, by the strip method and by the grab method respectively. Part 18 also gives instructions for testing wet specimens.
  • Part 10 — lint and other particles generated in the dry state. For a dry towel, this is the method that stands behind any claim about lint, and it is still the 2003 edition.
  • Parts 6, 8, 13, 14 — absorption, liquid strike-through time, repeated strike-through time and coverstock wetback. These are written around coverstock and hygiene use, so they are cited less often for a bath towel than for a wipe.

Lint, because it is the one a buyer tests

A dry towel is often judged by what it leaves behind on the surface it touched. Part 10 describes generating lint and other particles in the dry state, which is the closest published method to that judgement. A report that names the method is more useful than an adjective, but only if it also carries the result and the conditions: the method number alone is a statement about the procedure, not about the towel. "Tested to ISO 9073-10" with no figure attached is a sentence about a document.

Two ways edition citations go wrong

The first is citing a withdrawn edition, which happens wherever a specification is copied forward from an old file. The second is assuming that a reissued part changed the method. A reissue can be editorial, and the foreword states what was technically revised and what was not. Reading that paragraph is the only way to know, and the ISO catalogue links it from each part's page.

What this does not mean

  • A new edition does not retroactively invalidate an older test report. It makes that report evidence for a superseded edition, which is a different and usually manageable problem.
  • Part numbers are not quality levels. A towel is not better for being tested against more parts, and a longer test list is not a stronger product.
  • Nothing here states that any towel on this site has been tested to any part. No test data is claimed on this page.