You wrote «is»: did you mean «would be»? Who is «trying to pass those concerns off as minor considerations»?
There have been in some areas bureaucratic issues with wool, as if it were "warning-label class material": this has / has had people check a few facts.
Edit: which by the way means, some wool may have been treated in a way that raised concern in public health monitoring entities. Think of the Amazon, but do not forget those thing that are there touching your skin. You could want to look into it.
Anyway: when the issue is with production, maybe there are ways to partially fix it. Were the material toxic, you'd have in a way a bigger problem.
And anyway, surely the vast majority of us HN members reasons through quantities and vets the given puzzle pieces to at least some extent: as ericd noted, Cost/Risks/Benefit analysis are duly as what you have are options, with different tradeoffs and complications, and having further promising ones is certainly beneficial.
Yes, but in most cases, the wool today is considered waste; the primary market value of sheep is between mowing fields naturally and the meat. Which is why the industry has died as it has.
I suspect this is the massively buried lead here - one so huge and so buried that I'm having a hard time giving you the benefit of the doubt.
The lifecycle of wool itself is probably not at all the major concern. It will not take just a few more sheep to replace the entirety of the global use of polyester and other synthetics.
Livestock are notoriously land-intensive, and the reason behind much of the ongoing ecological devastation of places like the Amazon rainforest. Trying to pass those concerns off as minor considerations after the biodegradability and recyclability of wool is just... incredible.