Do you know how much chemicals your clothes contain?

Andrea Varga-Darabos Do you know how much chemicals your clothes contain? 27 April 2016 | 3 minute reading time

I’ve already told you a lot about the various chemicals used in cosmetics – chemicals that may irritate your skin or harm your health otherwise if allowed into the body. But much less discussed is the danger posed by chemicals in our clothes.

Everyone knows the unpleasant smell of chemicals that’s so common to new clothing – and you might as well have been left with itchiness, blushing or rashes after trying on a sweater or a new pair of jeans.

Here are the 5 most important things to know about the dark side of the garment industry:

1. 4% of the world’s arable land is used to grow cotton – most of it sprouted from genetically modified (GMO) seeds.

2. For every cotton T-shirt and every pair of jeans farmers need to produce 1 kg cotton which requires 20,000 litres of irrigation water.

3. The cotton- and textile industries are big consumers of chemicals: up to 2,000 different chemicals are used throughout the production cycle – to produce the cotton, to soften, smooth out and colour threads, to ensure the durability of colours, to make the fabric impregnable, etc.

4. In the world’s developing regions, chemical-laden industrial sewage often leaves plants without being treated or purified.

5. Most clothes and textiles produced in East Asia or America are likely to fail the quality tests that are conducted (rather randomly) by European authorities. Some of them have even been proven to contain several chemicals that are banned in the EU – such as nonylphenol ethoxylate (NPE).

Sounds scary, doesn’t it?

What can You do to reduce your exposure to harmful effects?

- If you can, buy products that were manufactured in the EU: clothes and home textiles made of eco-textile, organic cotton or recycled fibre. Make sure you know the labels that identify those products and look for them when you shop.

- In clothes that had been washed several times, researchers found barely (if any) of those chemicals which are usually present in most new garment. So make sure you wash every piece of new clothing, bed sheet and any textile that may come in direct contact with your skin.

- Buying less new clothing will not only save you money but it also helps to reduce your carbon footprint as well as the amount of chemicals your skin is exposed to.

- Clothes of darker colours have been shown to contain more chemicals than their bright-coloured peers – which has led experts to the conclusion that it’s best to choose bright colours for your baby or child in order to reduce the amount of chemicals their skin meets.

- Caution is advised especially when it comes to lingerie – so make sure your underwear is of bright colour and do go into the trouble of washing it twice before you first wear it.