Carcinogenic formaldehyde and allergenic PPDs will also be barred by signatories. Others include hormone-disrupting reprotoxic phthalates, common in clothes with vinyl screen-printed designs (Plastisol), fake leather and rubber, as well as heavy metals, azo dyes, and the list goes on. It’s promising that 40 per cent of its DWR outerwear will have made the switch by next spring.Īnd those, my friends, are just two of the compounds of concern on the Detox hit list. Greenie-favoured Patagonia, which like MEC offers a good selection of recycled and organic options, was at the upper end of the PFC scale but now vows to be PFOA-free by 2015. The lowest levels were found in Canuck indie Mountain Equipment Co-op’s jackets as well as snowboard/bike-friendly gear by Zimstern. But turns out the outerwear industry that makes our rain shells is dragging its hiking boots. The Detox signatories pledge to give them up H&M actually stopped selling anything with PFCs on January 1. The notoriously sticky perfluorinated chemicals used to protect clothing from splotches of ketchup and keep buckets of rain from drenching us (the same persistent villains used to make Gore-Tex and Teflon) are also turning up in China’s water and in finished items in the West. As in Mexico, 70 per cent of lakes, rivers and reservoirs are polluted. You can imagine the state of the black and blue frothing rivers neighbouring China’s 50,000 textile mills. Says Greenpeace, “When washed, a significant percentage of the chemicals in these clothes is released and subsequently discharged into rivers, lakes and seas, where they turn into the even more toxic and hormone-disrupting chemical nonylphenol (NP).” Turns out we’re washing these outlawed chems down our drains. Yep, they were in the finished fibres of pants and tops they tested, the same ones you buy in the store. What kind of hazardous chems are we talking about here? Well, in one sampling of 141 name-brand clothing items purchased in 18 countries, 63 per cent contained compounds outlawed in the West called nonylphenol ethoxylates used for processing the fabric. That’s huge, especially when that list includes sporting giants like Nike, Puma and Adidas as well fashion heavyweights H&M, Levi’s, Zara and, since the top of 2013, Benetton, Victoria’s Secret/La Senza, G-Star and Valentino. The result is that so far 17 (and counting) massive apparel makers and retailers have committed to eliminating all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout their supply chain by 2020. And through its “#peoplepowered” Detox campaign, it’s mobilized hundreds of thousands of consumers around the world to take on one brand after another. The eco organization has been slamming the sector with a barrage of Dirty Laundry reports since 2011. The colour came from a steady stream of hazardous denim-dyeing happening nearby for some of the 5 billion pairs of jeans stitched globally every year.īut the clothing industry’s chemical trail runs much deeper than dodgy pigments laced with heavy metals and carcinogenic amines, according to Greenpeace, which has been leading an international consumer campaign to get Big Fashion to clean up its act. When I worked as a researcher in the anti-sweatshop movement, I stumbled across reports of blue rivers in Mexico, and they weren’t just reflecting the azure skies. Why? Because it takes an equally weird toxic stew to finish the wearables we’re snapping up like junkies in record numbers. I’m thinking about printing T-shirts that say Clothing Is The New Meth.
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