Jonathan Webb

I believe it was just routine blood tests from the doctor that it sort of came up as something they were checking for.

Yes.

She really wanted to check.

Yes, exactly.

The initial study she's done is very, very small.

It's only 11 shirts she used from four different brands.

But every single one had lead levels higher than the recommended amounts in the US.

So the fact that every single one had lead in it is kind of a concern, I think.

Yeah, I mean, look, I deliberately wore a dress made of bright green bamboo fabric today because I wanted to make it extremely clear that I'm not getting rid of all of my brightly coloured clothes because I've done this story.

But yes, a lot of the contaminants can come through in the dyeing process.

Right.

Lead is used as a mordant in the textile industry to fix dyes in place.

So to make sure that things like stay really, really bright colors over long periods of time.

Brighter colors generally use more of these mordants to fix the dyes.

And so the brighter colors can often be a bit more problematic.

And that was what this very little US study found.

They found the more brightly colored shirts did have a bit more lead in them as well.

I think it's really interesting.

While I was doing research for this story, there are so many rules around food and cosmetics, knowing where the foods come from, what could be in it, what's tested for, what risks we need to be aware of.

And I think it's really interesting that when it comes to clothes, the fast fashion industry is huge and very complicated.