Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I want you to think about the clothes you're wearing. On your warm woolly jumper or light cotton t-shirt, there's a tag that might tell you what it's made of, where it was made, maybe how to wash it. But what it won't tell you is some of the chemicals that were used to make it that might still be clinging to the fibres.
Today, I'm going to pull on that thread and take a look at some of the chemical hazards that might be hiding in our wardrobes. I'm Jonathan Webb, and this is Lab Notes from ABC Radio National. I'm joined by science reporter Ellen Fidian, who has been rummaging in the dirty laundry of the fashion industry. Hello, Ellen.
Hello, Jonathan.
Now, conventional wisdom would say to wash clothes before wearing them for the first time. Sometimes actual labels on actual clothes will say wash before first use. I tend to look at that label and think, yeah, they're being really cautious. It's probably fine. Should I be paying more attention?
I think you probably should. Yeah. I don't want to be like a massive scaremonger. This is not an enormous risk. But the fact of the matter is we do use a lot of pretty hazardous materials to make a lot of textiles still. Things like lead, things like azo dyes and stuff. And it can get stuck in clothing and, you know, end up in consumers' hands. So it doesn't hurt to give it a wash.
At the very least. Okay. I'm taking note. What are some of the possible health effects of these contaminants and compounds, Ellen?
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Chapter 2: What hazardous chemicals might be in our clothing?
We do know that these things can be really, really harmful to people who are making the textiles. There's many documented cases of being exposed to things like carbon disulfide, which causes
really serious neurological problems, it's reasonable to assume the risk's a lot lower if you're just wearing a garment as opposed to, you know, if you're working with a vat of dye every single day, obviously. But we're talking about things like slightly increased risk of cancer. You know, long-term lead contamination can cause sort of slow systemic chronic issues.
So it's not a case of this is going to make people extremely sick, but it is doing things like increasing your risk of other diseases possibly.
So I should definitely be washing my children's clothing before they wear it, by the sounds. And I gather one of the researchers you spoke to first came up with the idea because someone in their own family got sick and they were worried about an exposure. Is that right?
I did, yes. So Camilla Devis, who's a researcher in the US, a chemistry researcher, started getting interested in lead contamination because her daughter very briefly had elevated lead levels. Fortunately, it was only a short period of time, but she started looking to see, you know, what could possibly have exposed her child to this.
How did she find out that her daughter had elevated lead levels?
I believe it was just routine blood tests from the doctor that it sort of came up as something they were checking for.
And mum happened to be a chemist and started testing everything in the house?
Yes. She really wanted to check. Yes, exactly.
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Chapter 3: Should we wash new clothes before wearing them?
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, I didn't realize that even what it's actually made of isn't mandatory.
Yeah, no.
So if you've already bought something, say, and you want to be as safe as possible, does washing solve the problem? Should we just be giving everything a really good wash?
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. There's a lot of research going on here at the moment. This is something that the US researchers are really interested in looking at. But it's not necessarily going to be a completely safe guarantee to wash it.
It could just be spreading the contamination out a bit.
Hmm, okay. So there are some things that you could do that might create another problem.
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Chapter 4: What are the health risks associated with lead in textiles?
The European Union at the moment is introducing a new standard. It's called a digital product passport and products sold in the EU will need to contain these little barcodes that you can scan and will tell you all of this information about where something's come from, how it was made, what's involved in the making, you know, how many different places it's gone through, all of that information.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out in Europe. It's possible some of that will come to Australia because a lot of brands that sell in Europe also sell in Australia. So it'll be interesting to see what they do.
Yeah, from the regulators that brought you USB-C cables for everything.
Yes.
Some transparency in the clothing manufacturing lines as well.
We may eventually learn that our shirts are 30% cotton again or, you know, where the cotton was grown, that sort of thing.
Ellen, thanks so much for sharing your lab notes with me.
Thank you, Jonathan.
That was Ellen Fidian, a science reporter here in the Radio National Science Unit. This episode of Lab Notes was made on Gadigal and Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. It was produced by Amy Briggs and I'm Jonathan Webb. I'll catch you next week.
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