Are your clothes toxic?
That's an extreme-sounding question. It's why I had fashion designer Jeff Garner on my podcast. Jeff has spent years questioning the chemicals used in clothing and textile manufacturing. His documentary, Let Them Be Naked, explores what it describes as the presence of “toxic and often harmful chemicals” in everyday clothing, and asks what exposure to those chemicals might mean for our health.
That's a significant claim. What would we need to establish to know whether it's true? Are harmful chemicals present in finished clothing? Do those chemicals remain bound to the fabric or can they transfer to the people wearing it? Can they penetrate our skin?
There are the questions that come after exposure. What happens to those chemicals once they're in or on us? Do they accumulate? Are they metabolized or eliminated? What biological effects might they produce?
Then there are different questions about the industry itself. Do manufacturers know which chemicals remain in finished garments? What testing is required? What are manufacturers required to disclose? What do regulators know? How much of that information ever reaches the person buying a shirt, pair of jeans, or athletic clothing?
Those are different questions. They shouldn't be collapsed into a single conclusion simply because the word toxic sounds alarming.
What Does “Toxic” Mean?
In toxicology, toxicity generally refers to a substance's capacity to cause harmful biological effects. What happens following an exposure depends on the substance, dose, route and duration of exposure, as well as characteristics of the organism exposed.
That's different from saying a toxic chemical is harmless until you receive a particular dose. If a substance causes biological damage, and my body repairs that damage, the substance didn't suddenly become nontoxic.
Biological defenses may affect the consequence of the exposure. If my body metabolizes or eliminates a substance rapidly while someone else's retains it, that doesn't change the inherent toxicity of the substance.
For this article, I'm starting with:
Is there a toxic substance in clothing?
Can it leave the clothing and cause an exposure to someone who wears it?
There's More to Your Shirt Than Cotton
Look at the label on a shirt and you might see 100% cotton.
Cotton describes the fiber. It doesn't tell everything involved in producing the garment. There can be dyes, printing inks, finishes, treatments, elastic materials, and other chemicals used during manufacturing.
Jeff became concerned about this while producing garments and printing T-shirts for bands. He described seeing workers wearing masks around freshly printed garments and noticing people operating the printers experiencing skin problems. The smell of the printing inks particularly caught his attention.
That led to a question:
What are we putting on our clothes?
And:
What happens to those substances after we put clothes on our bodies?
One assumption is that once a coating, dye, or ink has dried, exposure ends. Rather than assume the answer, I wanted to know whether substances in clothing can actually transfer to the people wearing it.
Who Benefits?
There are economic incentives for the way modern clothing is manufactured. Consumers want inexpensive clothes. They may want bright and consistent colors, stretch, wrinkle resistance, stain resistance, water resistance, softness, durability, and moisture management.
Synthetic fibers, dyes, finishes, and chemical treatments help manufacturers provide those properties consistently and inexpensively. The system could work as follows:
Manufacturer wants lower cost.
Retailer wants margin.
Consumer wants a $12 shirt.
Consumer also wants stretch, bright color, stain resistance, and moisture wicking.
Chemistry helps provide those properties cheaply and consistently.
Regulation addresses known risks, within existing standards.
Long-term or poorly understood exposures receive less attention.
Everyone could be behaving rationally, while the result produces something toxic to wear.
What Does “Organic” Tell Us?
Suppose a shirt prominently advertises: ORGANIC COTTON
It might seem reasonable to make assumptions based on that, such as, the garment is:
Natural.
Healthier.
Made with fewer chemicals.
Safe against skin.
What did the manufacturer actually tell us with the label? Only that the cotton fiber was organically grown.
That doesn't tell:
How was it dyed?
If it was treated, and if so, with what?
Does it contain materials other than 100% cotten?
What other chemicals are involved in manufacturing it?
Jeff raised this issue while discussing what he sees as greenwashing in fashion.
My Problem With “Performance” Clothing
The subject became personally interesting when we started talking about athletic clothing.
I climb in the desert. I've spent years trying to find simple cotton long-sleeved shirts. Increasingly, athletic clothing is made from polyester or polyester blends and marketed around moisture management—wicking sweat away, drying quickly, and supposedly helping keep me comfortable.
I've never liked it. In my experience, it doesn't make me feel cooler. It makes me feel tired and hot.
What does “moisture-wicking” mean?
Jeff described polyester as behaving differently from absorbent fibers such as cotton and discussed treatments used to alter how moisture spreads across some synthetic fabrics. He argues that natural fibers, particularly hemp, can provide useful performance characteristics without relying on the same synthetic construction.
He made a claim that research shows synthetic athletic fabrics can cause muscles to fatigue 25 percent faster. I didn't think to ask, What study? What fabric? Under what conditions? How was fatigue measured?
I'm going to turn that question into a miniature investigation for another article. I suspect claims such as “cotton is bad” or “synthetics are better” are taken out of context. The conditions under which you wear clothing may matter as much or more than the activity itself.
I want to understand why, and what “better” means for the problem we're trying to solve.
Cotton, Hemp, Wool—What Do We Need From Clothing?
The thought trap :
natural = good
synthetic = bad
It's not that simple. Different natural fibers behave differently.
Cotton readily absorbs water. That's why cotton has traditionally been useful for towels, medical pads, and applications where absorbency is desirable. Hemp behaves differently. I wear hemp socks because I've found them extremely durable for hiking and outdoor use.
Jeff described an informal experiment conducted for his documentary in which he and another person entered cold water wearing hemp and wool underwear while comparing the materials with synthetic fabric using thermal imaging. According to Jeff, wool maintained temperature well, hemp dropped somewhat, and the synthetic material approached the temperature of the water.
That's an interesting observation. Rather than asking, is it natural or synthetic, consider: What properties do I need this material to have?
Stretch Clothing
Yoga pants and tight athletic garments introduce variables. Jeff is concerned about spandex and prolonged skin contact with synthetic stretch fabrics. He suggested using primarily natural fibers where possible, with only enough synthetic material to provide the necessary elasticity.
I think the broader principle is more useful than obsessing over a particular percentage: What is the garment being asked to do, and what materials are necessary to make it do that? A small amount of synthetic material serving a functional purpose is a different proposition from constructing essentially the entire garment from it. If we're concerned about exposure, another variable matters:
How long is it touching us?
Start With What Touches You the Longest
Suppose we decide there are clothing exposures worth reducing.Do we throw away everything in our closets? I don't think that's the best strategy. Consider the factors that may contribute to your exposure:
What touches your body most intimately?
What touches the largest area?
What remains against your skin longest?
Underwear comes to mind, as do tight athletic clothing and bed sheets. If you sleep six to eight hours every night, your bedding may be against your skin roughly a third of your life. Jeff considers natural-fiber bedding one of the places people might prioritize.
Whether or not every health mechanism proposed in our conversation holds up, I like the reasoning behind the prioritization. If we're concerned about exposure, ask:
What touches me most frequently, for the longest time, and under what conditions?
Clothes Aren't the Only Variable
There's something that isn't part of the orignal garment :
Laundry detergent.
Whatever remains on clothing after washing potentially becomes part of the exposure environment when we subsequently wear it.
Do We Need Synthetic Dyes?
I asked how Jeff colors the clothing he makes.
His answer was plants. Jeff has studied natural dyeing in Florence and says humans produced an enormous range of colors before modern synthetic dyes existed. He connects his own work with historical plant-based pigments and dyeing traditions stretching back through the Renaissance.
That raises an assumption: Is this how clothing has to be made? Is this how we've chosen to make clothing at the scale, consistency, speed, performance, and price?
If another manufacturing method costs more, takes longer, produces greater variation, or can't satisfy the volume consumers demand, that doesn't make the alternative impossible. It tells us about trade-offs.
Clothing Is More Than an Exposure
One part of my conversation with Jeff had nothing to do with toxicity. He sees clothing as art and communication. He told me about encouraging friends who normally wore jeans and T-shirts to dress differently when going somewhere as ordinary as a coffee shop. They came back surprised that strangers noticed them, complimented them, and started conversations.
That philosophy carries into his work with musicians. Rather than putting a celebrity into whatever a fashion company wants to promote, Jeff talks with artists, looks at clothing they love, learns why they love it, and designs around who they are and the art they're performing.
Clothing can affect how we feel. It affects how people perceive us. It can initiate conversations. It can be art.
Can Chemicals Transfer From Clothing to Us?
Yes.
Chemical transfer from clothing into skin isn't hypothetical. It has been experimentally demonstrated. I found experimental evidence they can.
In one experiment, volunteers wore cotton T-shirts contaminated with dioxins and furans. After eight hours, researchers found that the chemicals had transferred from the shirts to the volunteers' skin and penetrated into layers of the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the skin.
In another experiment researchers studied benzothiazole, a chemical they had previously identified in clothing. They placed contaminated textile samples against an artificial membrane intended to simulate skin. The benzothiazole moved out of the textile, accumulated in the membrane, and some passed through it.
Can Chemicals Pass Through the Skin?
A chemical penetrating the outer layers of our skin isn't the same as that chemical passing completely through the skin and entering systemic circulation. Can that happen too?
Yes.
We know thisfrom medicine. Transdermal patches are designed to deliver chemicals through intact human skin and into systemic circulation. Nicotine and fentanyl are examples.
I found experimental evidence involving chemicals relevant to this discussion. In one experiment, researchers applied specially labeled phthalates directly to volunteers' forearms. Because the chemicals were labeled, researchers could distinguish this particular exposure from phthalates the participants might encounter elsewhere. Metabolites of some of the applied phthalates were subsequently detected in their urine. Different phthalates behaved differently. DEP crossed relatively readily, DBP more slowly, while DEHP showed very little permeation during the period studied.
The important finding is:
Some chemicals placed on intact human skin can pass through that skin and enter the body.
Now we have two experimentally demonstrated observations:
Chemicals in clothing can transfer from the clothing and penetrate human skin. And:
Some chemicals can pass through intact human skin and enter systemic circulation.
We know chemicals can transfer from clothing into human skin.
We know chemicals can pass through human skin and enter systemic circulation.
We know that some chemicals found or used in textiles have toxic properties.
Therefore, clothing is a source of exposure to toxic chemicals.
What We Established
Are chemicals with toxic properties present in clothing?
Yes.
Can chemicals in clothing transfer from the fabric to the person wearing it?
Yes.
Can they penetrate human skin?
Yes.
Can chemicals pass through intact human skin and enter systemic circulation?
Yes.
There is experimental evidence for each of those processes. I think the answer to the question, Can clothing expose us to toxic chemicals? is Yes.
Which brings me back to the question raised by Jeff's documentary:
Do you know what's in your clothing? We pay attention to what's in our food. We pay attention to what's in our water. We pay attention to what's in the air we breathe. Most of us spend nearly every hour of every day wearing clothing or lying in bedding.
Maybe clothing belongs on that list.
Listen or Watch the episode with guest Jeff Garner:
Apple Podcasts • YouTube • Spotify
About the Author / Host
Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.
Website: Prophetik (Clothing)
Website: Let Them Be Naked (Film)