For producing antibacterial textiles, the conventional finishing processes have high productivity and low processing costs, but textiles finished in these ways exhibit low durability against laundering. Therefore, cotton fabrics were bleached with hydrogen peroxide, finished with triclosan, and then treated with polycarboxylic acids such as 1,2,3,4-butanetetracarboxylic acid (BTCA) and citric acid (CA) as crosslinking agents to provide durable antibacterial properties. The surface of fibers treated with BTCA had a greater crosslinked area, and the surfaces of fabrics treated with CA were exposed to greater amounts of deformation due to the mechanical and chemical influences after 50 launderings. The bleaching and finishing treatments did not dramatically affect the breaking strength. However, the polycarboxylic acid treatment (both BTCA and CA) alone showed reductions in the breaking strength when the acid concentration was increased. The polycarboxylic acids were fairly effective against both bacteria, even at lower concentrations, when they were applied to stand-alone cotton fabrics, whereas the antibacterial activity decreased somewhat after the use of polycarboxylic acid and triclosan in the same recipes. Adding polycarboxylic acids to the antibacterial finishing recipes enhanced the durability after 50 launderings, and the durability of the recipes containing BTCA was much higher than that of the recipes containing CA. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 111: 1.3441352, 2009