Jonathan Webb

The supply chains are really, really long.

It's very hard to trace things backwards.

There's very little oversight.

There's very little requirements to say, okay,

what's been used to make this textile, the circumstances that it was made.

And at the moment in Australia, it's not even a mandatory requirement to say like what fibres your clothing is made of.

So the sort of, you know, 50% cotton, 50% polyester, that sort of thing, that's not legally required at the moment.

We don't have to say what fibres your fabric is made of.

And I do think it's weird that

We're very, very good at tracing other things that come very, very close to our bodies.

But clothing and textiles is something that there's just this kind of massive knowledge gap on.

Yeah, no.

Everyone I spoke to for this story definitely recommended washing all new textiles that come into your home before you first use them.

That said, it's not necessarily always going to help.

The lead researchers are actually looking at different detergents at the moment for removing lead.

The enzyme based detergents we use now, they don't really, chemically speaking, they don't react all that well with lead.

And so they're not going to be necessarily as good at removing it from the fabric.

And the other risk is if you use something that's a little bit better at removing lead, like, say, vinegar could possibly help.

If you're not careful, that can also end up just in your washing machine, in the scum and kind of contaminating the rest of your clothes.

And so, again, we don't know.