Speaking of potentially unsafe products: fabrics used in clothing, sheets, towels, etc can be contaminated with lead and other heavy metals that were used as ‘mordants’ (substances that bind dyes to fabric) in the clothing industry. They may also contain traces of the chemicals used when processing some types of natural fibre to make them suitable for use in fabrics.
Australia’s regulations don’t address this risk.
Lead in children’s clothing
Kamila Deavers, a chemist at Marian University in the US, first became interested in lead contamination after blood tests showed her young daughter briefly had elevated lead levels.
She began to test items around her home to find possible sources of the toxic metal, including clothing.
Lead and other heavy metals have been widely used as “mordants” in the textile industry: compounds that fix dyes in place, helping them keep colour for longer.
Dr Deavers and her team tested 11 children’s shirts from large retail and fashion brands for lead, and found that all of them exceeded the 100ppm specified by US regulations. They also found that lead leaching out of the fabrics of these shirts could exceed this level.
Heavy metals aren’t the only contaminants observed in fabrics. Even the chemicals used in processing natural fibres can be a problem.
Other contaminants in clothes
Beyond heavy metals for dyeing, a range of other substances are used to make fabrics that could potentially harm their wearers, such as some azo dyes and PFAS for waterproof clothing.
Rayon and viscose fabrics, which are made from reconstituted cellulose from wood pulp, are often made with carbon disulphide, which has been linked to a range of health problems.
This includes “bamboo” fabrics, which have surged in popularity in recent years and are often marketed as safer.
Note that natural bamboo fibre isn’t suitable for soft fabrics. It takes a fair bit of chemical processing to make it soft and silky, and some of the chemicals used can be retained in the finished fabric.
Australia’s labelling laws don’t even require the label to say what fabric/s the garment’s made of, let alone anything about how and where it was processed.
In Australia, it’s no longer even a requirement to tell consumers what fabric a garment is made of.
Fibre content labelling laws lapsed nationally in 2010, and the last individual state laws, in New South Wales, expired in 2019.
