Since carbon footprint is a pressing concern, we will re-publish, and bring into one place here on our blog – the astounding facts about fabric and carbon footprint. You can easily lighten your carbon footprint just through your textile choices!  Next week, we’ll re-publish graphs that visually and profoundly illustrate the facts.

The following article appeared in the June, 2009 issue of The O’Mama Report, a publication of the Organic Trade Association.  Patty has made minor revisions in 2023.

Leigh and I had / have a bad tendency to bury the important takeaways among too much data – so I have bolded the important summary takeaways in case you are in a hurry!

Elephant In The Room!!

Although most of the current focus on lightening our carbon footprint revolves around transportation and heating issues, the modest little fabric all around you turns out to be from an industry with a gigantic carbon footprint. The textile industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is the 5^th largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the United States, after primary metals, nonmetallic mineral products, petroleum, and chemicals.[1]

The textile industry is huge, and it is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses (GHG’s).  Today’s textile industry is one of the largest sources of GHG’s on Earth, due to the huge size.[2]    In 2008,  annual global textile production was estimated at  60 billion kilograms ( 60,000 Kilotons) of fabric.  (In 2023, it’s 110,000 kilotons!)  The estimated energy and water needed to produce that amount of fabric boggles the mind. (This is based on the old 2008 volume):

• 1,074 billion kWh of electricity  or 132 million metric tons of coal and
• between 6 – 9 trillion liters of water[3]

Fabrics are the elephant in the room.  They’re all around us –  but no one is thinking about them.  We simply overlook fabrics, maybe because they are almost always used as a component in a final product that seems rather innocuous:  sheets, blankets, sofas, curtains, and of course clothing.  Textiles, including clothing, accounted for about one ton of the 19.8 tons of total CO2 emissions produced by each person in the U.S. in 2006. [4]  By contrast, a person in Haiti produced a total of only 0.21 tons of total carbon emissions in 2006.[5]    

Your textile choices DO make a difference, so it’s vitally important to look beyond thread counts, color, and abrasion results.

We go onto evaluate the carbon footprint of  fabrics made from various fiber types. You can read it all below or just look at the very high level take aways just below.

The big take-aways:

Any natural fiber fabric is a MUCH better carbon footprint choice than any synthetic fiber fabric.

Not only is the quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of concern regarding synthetics, so too are the kinds of gasses produced during production of synthetic fibers.  Nylon, for example, creates emissions of N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2 [6] and which, because of its long life (120 years) can reach the upper atmosphere and deplete the layer of stratospheric ozone, which is an important filter of UV radiation.  In fact, during the 1990s, N2O emissions from a single nylon.

Natural fibers, in addition to having a smaller carbon footprint, have additional  benefits such as being able to sequester carbon and to biodegrade.

Substituting organic fibers for conventionally grown  natural fibers is not just a little better – it is lots better in all respects:  uses less energy for production, emits fewer greenhouse gases, and supports organic farming (which has myriad environmental, social and health benefits). 

Organic agriculture is an undervalued and underestimated climate change tool that could be one of the most powerful strategies in the fight against global warming.

An organic fiber fabric, processed to GOTS standards, is, without a doubt), the safest, most responsible choice possible in terms of both stewardship of the earth, preserving health and limiting toxicity load to humans and animals, and reducing carbon footprint – and emphasizing rudimentary social justice issues such as no child labor.

OKAY, the above is my attempt at summarizing for busy people. The whole article with supporting studies and data continues below:

How do you determine the carbon footprint in any fabric?

 Look at the “embodied energy’ in the fabric – that is, all of the energy used at each step of the process needed to create that fabric.  To estimate the embodied energy in any fabric it’s necessary to add the energy required in two separate fabric production steps.

 (1)  Find out what the fabric is made from, because the type of fiber tells you a lot about the energy needed to make the fibers used in the yarn.  The carbon footprint of various fibers varies a lot, so start with the energy required to produce the fiber.

(2) Next, add the energy used to weave those yarns into fabric.  Once any material becomes a “yarn” or “filament”, the amount of energy and conversion process to weave that yarn into a textile is pretty consistent, whether the yarn is wool, cotton, nylon or polyester.[7]

Let’s look at #1 first: the energy needed to make the fibers and create the yarn. For ease of comparison we’ll divide the fiber types into “natural” (from plants, animals and less commonly, minerals) and “synthetic” (man made). 

For natural fibers you must look at field preparation, planting, and field operations (mechanized irrigation, weed control, pest control, and fertilizers (manure vs. synthetic chemicals)), harvesting and yields.  Synthetic fertilizer use is a major component of the high cost of conventional agriculture:  making just one ton of nitrogen fertilizer emits nearly 7 tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases.

 For synthetics, a crucial fact is that the fibers are made from fossil fuels.   Very high amounts of energy are used in extracting the oil from the ground as well as in the production of the polymers. 

A study done by the Stockholm Environment Institute on behalf of the BioRegional Development Group  concludes that the energy used (and therefore the CO2 emitted) to create 1 ton of spun fiber is much higher for synthetics than for hemp or cotton:

The table above only gives results for polyester; other synthetics have more of an impact:  acrylic is 30% more energy intensive in its production than polyester [8] and nylon is even higher than that.

Not only is the quantity of GHG emissions of concern regarding synthetics, so too are the kinds of gasses produced during production of synthetic fibers.  Nylon, for example, creates emissions of N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2 [9] and which, because of its long life (120 years) can reach the upper atmosphere and deplete the layer of stratospheric ozone, which is an important filter of UV radiation.  In fact, during the 1990s, N2O emissions from a single nylon plant in the UK were thought to have a global warming impact equivalent to more than 3% of the UK’s entire CO2 emissions.[10]  A study done for the New Zealand Merino Wool Association shows how much less total energy is required for the production of natural fibers than synthetics:

SOURCE:  “LCA: New Zealand Merino Wool Total Energy Use”, Barber and Pellow, 

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/mats324/mats324A9%20NFETE.htm

Natural fibers, in addition to having a smaller carbon footprint in the production of the spun fiber, have many additional  benefits:

1. Being able to be degraded by microorganisms and composted (improving soil structure); in this way the fixed CO2 in the fiber will be released and the cycle closed.   Synthetics do not decompose: in landfills they release heavy metals and other additives into soil and groundwater.  Recycling requires costly separation, while incineration produces pollutants – in the case of high density polyethylene, 3 tons of CO2 emissions are produced for every 1 ton of material burnt.[11]  Left in the environment, synthetic fibers contribute, for example, to the estimated 640,000 tons of abandoned fishing nets in the world’s oceans.
2. Sequestering carbon. Sequestering carbon is the process through which CO2 from the atmosphere is absorbed by plants through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in biomass (leaves, stems, branches, roots, etc.) and soils.  Jute, for example, absorbs 2.4 tons of carbon per ton of dry fiber.[12]

Substituting organic fibers for conventionally grown fibers is not just a little better – it is lots better in all respects:  uses less energy for production, emits fewer greenhouse gases, and supports organic farming (which has myriad environmental, social and health benefits).  A study published by Innovations Agronomiques (2009) found that 43% less GHG are emitted per unit area under organic agriculture than under conventional agriculture.[13]  A study done by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University found that organic farming systems used just 63% of the energy required by conventional farming systems, largely because of the massive amounts of energy requirements needed to synthesize nitrogen fertilizers. Further it was found in controlled long term trials that organic farming adds between 100-400kg of carbon per hectare to the soil each year, compared to non-organic farming.  When this stored carbon is included in the carbon footprint, it reduces the total GHG even further.[14] The key lies in the handling of organic matter (OM): because soil organic matter is primarily carbon, increases in soil OM levels will be directly correlated with carbon sequestration. While conventional farming typically depletes soil OM, organic farming builds it through the use of composted animal manures and cover crops.

Taking it one step further beyond the energy inputs we’re looking at, which help to mitigate climate change, organic farming helps to ensure other environmental and social goals:

• eliminates the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which is not only an improvement in human health and agrobiodiversity but also for the associated off farm biotic communities
• conserves water (making the soil more friable so rainwater is absorbed better – lessening irrigation requirements and erosion)
• ensures sustained biodiversity
• and compared to forests, agricultural soils may be a more secure sink for atmospheric carbon, since they are not vulnerable to logging and wildfire.

Organic agriculture is an undervalued and underestimated climate change tool that could be one of the most powerful strategies in the fight against global warming, according to Paul Hepperly, Rodale Institute Research Manager. The Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial (FST) soil carbon data (which covers 30  – now 45 years) shows conclusively that improved global terrestrial stewardship–specifically including regenerative organic agricultural practices–can be the most effective currently available strategy for mitigating CO2 emissions. (http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/Rodale_Research_Paper-07_30_08.pdf

At the fiber level it is clear that synthetics have a much bigger footprint than does any natural fiber, including wool or conventionally produced cotton.   So in terms of the carbon footprint at the fiber level, any natural fiber beats any synthetic – at this point in time.   Best of all is an organic natural fiber.

And next let’s look at #2, the energy needed to weave those yarns into fabric. 

There is no dramatic difference in the amount of energy needed to weave fibers into fabric depending on fiber type.[15] The processing energy the cost is close to the same whether the fiber is nylon, cotton, hemp, wool, or polyester:   thermal energy required per meter of cloth is 4,500-5,500 Kcal and electrical energy required per meter of cloth is 0.45-0.55 kwh. [16]   This translates into huge quantities of fossil fuels  –  both to create energy directly needed to power the mills, produce heat and steam, and power air conditioners, as well as indirectly to create the many chemicals used in production.  In addition, the textile industry has one of the lowest efficiencies in energy utilization because it is largely antiquated. 

But there is an additional dimension to consider during processing:  environmental pollution.  Conventional textile processing is highly polluting:

• 2000 chemicals are regularly used in textile processing, many of them known to be harmful to human (and animal) health.  More are added frequently. Some of these chemicals evaporate, some are dissolved in treatment water which is discharged to our environment, and some remain in the fabric, to be brought into our homes (where, with use, tiny bits abrade and you ingest or inhale them).  A whole list of the most commonly used chemicals in fabric production are linked to human health problems that vary from annoying to profound.
• The application of these chemicals uses copious amounts of water. In fact, the textile industry is the #1 industrial polluter of fresh water on the planet.[17]  These wastewaters are discharged (largely untreated) into our groundwater with a high pH and temperature as well as chemical load. This fact will eventually kill all the local flora and fauna. Google the Aral Sea.

Currently, there are few regulatory standards for textiles in the United States.   Many European countries, as well as Japan and Australia, have much stricter restrictions on the use of chemicals in textiles and apparel than does the United States, and these world regulations will certainly impact U.S. production. 

There is a bright spot in all this:  an alternative to conventional textile processing does exist.  The new (GOTS had just been promulgated when this article first appeared in 2009) Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) (www.global-standard.org)

is a  tool for an international common understanding of environmentally friendly production systems and social accountability in the textile sector.  GOTS addresses issues in the production, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labeling, exportation, importation, and distribution of all natural fibers; that means, specifically, for example:  use of certified organic fibers, prohibition of all GMOs and their derivatives; and prohibition of a long list of synthetic chemicals (for example: formaldehyde and aromatic solvents are prohibited; dyestuffs must meet strict requirements (such as threshold limits for heavy metals, no  AZO colorants or aromatic amines) and PVC cannot be used for packaging). 

A fabric which is produced to the GOTS standards is more than just the fabric.

It is a promise to keep our air and water pure and our soils renewed. It’s a fabric which will not cause harm to you or your descendants. 

At this point in time, given the technology we have now, an organic fiber fabric, processed to GOTS standards, is, without a doubt), the safest, most responsible choice possible in terms of both stewardship of the earth, preserving health and limiting toxicity load to humans and animals, and reducing carbon footprint – and emphasizing rudimentary social justice issues such as no child labor. 

So INSIST on GOTS certified fabrics. There is no time to lose. What you buy will get produced.

[1] Source: Energy Information Administration, Form EIA:848, “2002 Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey,” Form EIA-810, “Monthly Refinery Report” (for 2002) and Documentatioin for Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2003 (May 2005). http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1204.html

[2] Dev, Vivek, “Carbon Footprint of Textiles”, April 3, 2009, http://www.domain-b.com/environment/20090403_carbon_footprint.html

[3] Rupp, Jurg, “Ecology and Economy in Textile Finishing”,  Textile World,  Nov/Dec 2008

[4]  Rose, Coral, “CO2 Comes Out of the Closet”,  GreenBiz.com, September 24, 2007

[5]  U.S. Energy Information Administration, “International Energy Annual 2006”, posted Dec 8, 2008.

[6]   “Tesco carbon footprint study confirms organic farming is energy efficient, but excludes key climate benefit of organic farming, soil carbon”, Prism Webcast News, April 30, 2008, http://prismwebcastnews.com/2008/04/30/tesco-carbon-footprint-study-confirms-organic-farming%E2%80%99s-energy-efficiency-but-excludes-key-climate-benefit-of-organic-farming-%E2%80%93-soil-carbon/

[7]  Many discussions of energy used to produce fabrics or final products made from fabrics (such as clothing) take the “use” phase of the article into consideration when evaluating the carbon footprint.  The argument goes that laundering the blouse (or whatever) adds considerably to the final energy tally for natural fibers, while synthetics don’t need as much water to wash nor as many launderings.  We do not take this component into consideration because

• it applies only to clothing; even sheets aren’t washed as often as clothing while upholstery is seldom cleaned.
• is biodegradeable detergent used?
• Is the washing machine used a new low water machine?  Is the water treated by a municipal facility?
• Synthetics begin to smell if not treated with antimicrobials, raising the energy score.

Indeed, it’s important to evaluate the sponsors of any published studies, because the studies done which evaluate the energy used to manufacture fabrics are often sponsored by organizations which might have an interest in the outcome.  Additionally, the data varies quite a bit so we have adopted the values which seem to be agreed upon by most studies.

[8] Ibid.

[9]   “Tesco carbon footprint study confirms organic farming is energy efficient, but excludes key climate benefit of organic farming, soil carbon”, Prism Webcast News, April 30, 2008, http://prismwebcastnews.com/2008/04/30/tesco-carbon-footprint-study-confirms-organic-farming%E2%80%99s-energy-efficiency-but-excludes-key-climate-benefit-of-organic-farming-%E2%80%93-soil-carbon/

[10] Fletcher, Kate, Sustainable Fashion and Textiles,  Earthscan, 2008,  Page 13

[11]  “Why Natural Fibers”, FAO, 2009: http://www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/iynf/sustainable.html

[12] Ibid.

[13] Aubert, C. et al.,  (2009) Organic farming and climate change: major conclusions of the Clermont-Ferrand seminar (2008) [Agriculture biologique et changement climatique : principales conclusions du colloque de Clermont-Ferrand (2008)]. Carrefours de l’Innovation Agronomique 4. Online at <http://www.inra.fr/ciag/revue_innovations_agronomiques/volume_4_janvier_2009>

[14] International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO and Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL);    Organic Farming and Climate Change; Geneva: ITC, 2007.

[15]  24^th session of the FAO Committee on Commodity Problems IGG on Hard Fibers of the United Nations

[16] “Improving profits with energy-efficiency enhancements”, December 2008,  Journal for Asia on Textile and Apparel,  http://textile.2456.com/eng/epub/n_details.asp?epubiid=4&id=3296

[17] Cooper, Peter, “Clearer Communication,” Ecotextile News, May 2007.

Hello All;

We have not been posting regularly for the last year, but we will be prioritizing posting again now.

Numerous workrooms have contacted us to ask questions about making face masks – for medical professionals primarily. (According to CDC Guidelines, if you are not a medical professional or if you are not already infected, social distancing is preferable to wearing a face mask. In any case, it is the medical professionals who really need and still cannot get face masks.)

In making those masks, there are two major considerations so that we produce masks that do NOT do more harm than good:

1. – The seals everywhere are adjustable and as tight as possible; and
2. – The fabric used  will stop at least a goodly percentage most of the virus from passing through. The coronavirus is 120NM in diameter.  A NM is one-billionth of a meter. The 95 in the N95 masks means that the fabric prevents 95% of the virus from passing through.

There is a Million Mask project to recruit home sewers to make masks from kits provided by the Provident Health System. Although Providence says the fabric is “not available commercially,” they most likely mean not available retail. 

An epidemiologist with King County Health of Washington State believes that Providence undertook this project because they could not get N95 masks for front line medical workers and because these masks were better than nothing – meaning they had fabric that would stop a majority of the virus from passing through even if the seals were not optimal.

N95 masks – still largely unavailable because they’re sold out. 3M, the producer is doing all they can.

The Million Mask Challenge project by the Providence Health System has blueprints for making fabric facemasks and a video on sewing the kits using the material they mail out.

If you want to receive information on fabric and other sources of materials, please email service@twosistersecotextiles.com  or stay tuned as we’ll be writing another post about this topic soon.

If you choose to make these masks or shields, and you can use safe materials, that is preferable, of course – such as using GOTS certified for the fabric and GOLS certified or Oeko-Tex 100 certified foam strips for the foam – but we are dispensing with material safety considerations because of the extremely short timeline we are all under.

Leigh Anne and Patty

This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 (Katz, Cheryl, “Piling Up: How China’s Ban in Importing Waste has Stalled Global Recycling”, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, March 7, 2019).  We think it’s quite important so we’re reprinting it here:

It has been a year since China jammed the works of recycling programs around the world by essentially shutting down what had been the industry’s biggest market. China’s National Sword policy, enacted in January 2018, banned the import of most plastics  and other materials headed for that nation’s recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century. The move was an effort to halt a deluge of soiled and contaminated materials that was overwhelming Chinese processing facilities and leaving the country with yet another environmental problem—and this one not of its own making.

In the year since, China’s plastic imports have plummeted by 99 percent, leading to a major global shift in where and how materials tossed in the recycling bin are being processed. While the glut of plastics is the main concern, China’s imports of mixed paper have also dropped by a third. Recycled aluminum and glass are less affected by the ban.

Globally, more plastics are now ending up in landfills, incinerators, or likely littering the environment as rising costs to haul away recyclable materials increasingly render the practice unprofitable. In England, more than half a million more tons of plastics and other household garbage were burned last year. Australia’s recycling industry is facing a crisis as the country struggles to handle the 1.3 million-ton stockpile of recyclable waste it had previously shipped to China.

Across the United States, local governments and recycling processors are scrambling to find new markets. Communities from Douglas County, Oregon, to Hancock, Maine, have curtailed collections or halted their recycling programs entirely, which means that many residents are simply tossing plastic and paper into the trash. Some places, like Minneapolis, have stopped accepting black plastics and rigid No. 6 plastics like disposable cups. Others, like Philadelphia, are now burning the bulk of their recyclables  at a waste-to-energy plant, raising concerns about air pollution.

Even before China’s ban, only 9 percent of discarded plastic was being recycled, while 12 percent was burned. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and oceans. Without China to process plastic bottles, packaging, and food containers—not to mention industrial and other plastic waste—the already massive waste problem posed by our throwaway culture will be exacerbated, experts say. The planet’s load of nearly indestructible plastics—more than 8 billion tons have been produced worldwide over the past six decades—continues to grow.

“Already, we’ve been seeing evidence in the past year of the accumulation of plastic waste in countries that are dependent on exporting,” says the University of Georgia’s Amy Brooks, a PhD student in engineering and lead author of a recent study on the impact of China’s import ban. “We’ve seen increased cost to consumers, closure of recycling facilities, and ultimately decreased plastic waste diversion.”

The recycling crisis triggered by China’s ban could have an upside, experts say, if it leads to better solutions for managing the world’s waste, such as expanding processing capacities in North America and Europe, and spurring manufacturers to make their products more easily recyclable. Above all, experts say it should be a wake-up call to the world on the need to sharply cut down on single-use plastics.

Over the coming decade, as many as 111 million tons of plastics will have to find a new place to be processed or otherwise disposed of as a result of China’s ban, according to Brooks and University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck. However, the places trying to take up some of the slack in 2018 tended to be lower-income countries, primarily in Southeast Asia, many of which lack the infrastructure to properly handle recyclables. Many of those countries were quickly overwhelmed by the volume and have also now cut back on imports.

Prior to China’s ban, 95 percent of the plastics collected for recycling in the European Union and 70 percent in the US were sold and shipped to Chinese processors. There, they were turned into forms to be repurposed by plastic manufacturers. Favorable rates for shipping in cargo vessels that carried Chinese consumer goods abroad and would otherwise return to China empty, coupled with the country’s low labor costs and high demand for recycled materials, made the practice profitable.

“Everyone was sending their materials to China because their contamination standard was low and their pricing was very competitive,” says Johnny Duong, acting chief operating officer of California Waste Solutions, which handles recycling for Oakland and San Jose. Like most municipal recycling programs, those cities contract with Duong’s company to collect and sort recyclable waste at its materials recovery facility, where they are baled and sent to end-market processors. Before the ban, Duong says, his company sold around 70 percent of its recyclables to China. Now that has fallen to near zero.

China’s action came after many recycling programs had transitioned from requiring consumers to separate paper, plastics, cans, and bottles to today’s more common “single stream,” where it all goes into the same blue bin. As a result, contamination from food and waste has risen, leaving significant amounts unusable. In addition, plastic packaging has become increasingly complex, with colors, additives, and multilayer, mixed compositions making it ever more difficult to recycle. China has now cut off imports of all but the cleanest and highest-grade materials — imposing a 99.5 percent purity standard that most exporters find all but impossible to meet.

“All recyclable plastics from municipal recycling programs have been pretty much banned,” says Anne Germain, vice president of technical and regulatory affairs for the US trade group National Waste and Recycling Association. “It’s had a tremendous impact. Costs associated with recycling are up, revenue associated with recycling is down. And that’s not turning around in the next few weeks.”

The US and Europe, where many cities have long-standing recycling collection programs, have been especially hard hit. Decades of reliance on China had stifled development of domestic markets and infrastructure. “There are just not very easy or cost-effective options for dealing with it now,” says Brooks. “So if nothing is done to ensure efficient management of plastic waste, the cost-effective option is to send it to landfills or incineration.”

In the US, small town and rural recycling operations have been hit the hardest. While most continue to operate, rising costs and falling incomes are forcing some, like the one in Kingsport, Tennessee, to shut down. Others, as in Phenix City, Alabama, have stopped accepting all plastics, while places like Deltona, Florida, have suspended curbside pickup. Residents in municipalities like these now must travel to collection points, sometimes in distant locations, if they want to recycle. Inevitably, some people just toss their recyclables in the trash instead.

Most larger cities—such as New York, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon—have been able to either find alternative markets or improve and expand their municipal operations to process higher-quality and more marketable materials. But many have had to make changes, including dropping some harder-to-recycle materials from their programs. Sacramento, California, for instance, halted collection of plastics labeled No. 4 through 7 for several months last year at the city waste operator’s request. Residents were told to discard those items in their household garbage.

“That was a real eye opener for a lot of folks who love to feel good about putting their recycling in their blue bin and then it magically turns into something else,” says Erin Treadwell, community outreach manager for Sacramento Public Works. “We wish it was that easy.” Collection there resumed in November after a public education campaign on how households should clean and sort their recyclables.

In Philadelphia last year, when the city’s waste contractor demanded higher fees for collecting and processing recycled materials, the city sent half its recyclables to a waste-to-energy plant, where they were burned to generate electricity; the rest went to an interim contractor.

Incineration is on the rise in parts of Europe, as well. In England, nearly 11 million tons of waste were burned at waste-to-energy plants last year, up 665,000 tons from the previous fiscal year. The facilities are designed to contain emissions, and the practice has sparked strong reactions both for and against among environmentalists and scientists. However, a recent study by the nonprofit Zero Waste Europe found that even state-of-the-art incinerators can emit dioxins and other harmful pollutants.

European nations that had exported most of their recyclables to China have faced growing piles of low-quality plastic scrap, causing “a congestion of the whole system,” says Chaim Waibel, adviser for the industry association Plastics Recyclers Europe. The displaced European plastic was mostly diverted to Indonesia, Turkey, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam, Waibel says.

Simon Ellin, CEO of the Recycling Association, a UK industry group, said these countries have struggled to cope with the volume displaced by the Chinese ban and were beginning to impose their own import restrictions.

Whether China’s ban leads to increased plastic pollution in the environment remains to be seen. “The plastic is now getting diverted to countries with a high risk of improper management and high leakage rates,” says Roland Geyer, an industrial ecology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and lead author of a recent study on the ultimate fate of disposed plastics. Still, China, with its high volume of imports, had been the source of more than a quarter of the world’s mismanaged waste, Jambeck says. So if proper alternatives are found, plastic pollution could actually decrease.

Some options are beginning to emerge. Several US materials recovery facilities are expanding operations, upgrading equipment, and adding workers to improve sorting and reduce contamination so that the materials are acceptable to more discerning buyers. Duong’s Oakland-based company—which handles paper, plastics, and some metals—has modified its equipment and devised better ways of separating materials. The company has developed new markets domestically and in places like South Korea, Indonesia, and India.

And displaced Chinese processors have announced plans to open new US processing plants in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Huntsville, Alabama. The companies will shred or pelletize things like plastic food containers to make products such as artificial plants and hangers.

“There is the expectation that we’ll be able to expand domestic processing,” says Germain. “That’s the good news. [But] you don’t build a new facility overnight.”

A variety of new policies aimed at reducing plastic waste are also in the works. The European Parliament recently approved a ban on single-use plastics, including plastic cutlery, straws, and drink-stirrers. Several North American cities, including Seattle and Vancouver, and companies like Starbucks and American Airlines have taken similar actions. And many places around the world now restrict plastic shopping bags.

“Reducing the amount of waste we generate in the first place is the most important thing we can do,” says Lance Klug, information officer for California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. The agency has been working with manufacturers for the past decade to reduce the discarded packaging that makes up about a quarter of what’s in the state’s landfills, he says, adding, “We’re trying to get industry more involved in the end-of-life disposition of their products.”

Britain is planning to tax manufacturers of plastic packaging with less than 30 percent recycled materials. And Norway recently adopted a system in which makers of single-use plastic bottles pay an “environmental levy” that declines as the return rate for their products rises. The bottles must be designed for easy recycling, with no toxic additives, only clear or blue color, and water-soluble labels.

One year on, China’s National Sword policy is proving to be double-edged—both sparking chaos and drawing overdue attention to the way the world deals with its waste.

“The collect-sort-export model, with some domestic manufacturing, worked for us for a long time when markets for recycled materials were good, particularly in China,” says Klug. “But that’s no longer the case, and it’s probably never going to be the case again.”

A company that sells fabric on line has a post about why they don’t offer Oeko-Tex certification.  Their post is woefully incorrect.

We do not name the company, but call it FabricsellerA. Their post, titled,   Why Oeko-Tex certification is NOT Relevant to American Made Fabrics,  (the entirety of which you can read below at the end of this post) claims that, in America, for American-made fabrics, Oeko-Tex is irrelevant because the US government, primarily in the form of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)   ensures that products made in the USA

“ have met the most stringent, comprehensive American health and safety standards.”  …”which makes them even more rigorous than the OEKO-TEX test criteria. This is why OEKO-TEX certification is not required in the United States. These strict measures guarantee the highest levels of safety, not only for the consumers who use the fabrics, but also for the health and safety of those who make them, and environmental protection…In addition to (our) ongoing mission and commitment to bringing you safe, high-quality products for your use, our fabrics are, of course, CPSIA Compliant. They meet the highest standards of health and safety in the world.”

FabricsellerA is most thoroughly incorrect.

We find that many people really want to believe that America’s product safety and toxicity standards are the most stringent in the world. This is very, very far from the truth. Our protections from exposure to toxic chemicals is completely inadequate.

First we will give you a  visual of just a few of the thousands of chemicals regularly used in textile production with unsavory to scary toxicity profiles, and how the US government and the Oeko-Tex standard compare in protecting us.  Then we will recount in detail how the CPSC,  OSHA, and the EPA  fail to protect us as well as Oeko-Tex does. It is not even close.

First the visual:

There are lots more chemicals limited by Oeko-Tex which are not regulated by the US government.  We’ve tried to count, but many of the limits apply to whole classes of chemicals, so we would be under-reporting, but our count ignoring classes (which would greatly increase the number) is 300.

The grand total of chemicals prohibited or limited by the CPSC is two: lead and eight forms of phthalates, which by our count methodology would count as one.

But for a closer examination about why we may want to insist on Oeko-Tex (or, better yet, GOTS, the Global Organic Textile Standard) certification, because of the government failing at this job, let’s start with a look at the CPSC.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)is the agency that regulates the sale and manufacture of consumer products, and ultimately certifies a fabric as compliant and approved for sale in the United States, in accordance with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).

Before 2014, CPSC regulated only one chemical of the extremely long list of unsavory and toxic chemicals used in the process of fabric production which can, and often do, remain in fabric:  lead.  In 2014 Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement act, which banned three chemicals in the class of phthalates (DEHP, DBP, and BBP) and suggest an expert panel study the banning of two others. In 2017 the panel did ban five others, concluding the ten year effort to ban a small subset of phthalates. (Other very toxic phthalates, including BPA, and the chemical cousins used as substitutes for BPA, are not banned by the feds. Eleven states have bans for baby bottles, and similar products.)

Children’s clothing cannot contain more than 100 parts per million.  Oeko Tex restricts lead to 1 part per million; and Oeko-Tex restricts lead from all fabrics, not just in children’s clothing.

The CPSC does regulate eight phthalates in children’s toys and child care items — like teething rings — but not in fabric in children’s clothes. Children’s toys and care items cannot contain concentrations of more than 0.1% of diisononyl phthalate (DINP), diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP), dinpentyl phthalate (DPENP), dinhexyl phthalate (DHEXP), or dicyclohexyl phthalate (DCHP).  These kinds of chemicals are usually used to soften plastic and make it more pliable. Exposure to these chemicals by children has been linked with health problems like hormone disruption and damage to reproductive development, among other serious issues.

The CPSIA’s permanent prohibition concerning DEHP, DBP, and BBP remains in effect. Thus, effective April 25, 2018, any children’s toy or child care article that contains concentrations of more than 0.1 percent of the following phthalates is prohibited:

• di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP),
• dibutyl phthalate (DBP),
• benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP),
• diisononyl phthalate (DINP),
• diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP),
• di-n-pentyl phthalate (DPENP),
• di-n-hexyl phthalate (DHEXP), and
• dicyclohexyl phthalate (DCHP).

Greenpeace has done work that points out the very large concentrations of phthalates in many popular Disney children’s clothes.  You can read Leigh’s blog on this issue at https://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/?s=Toxic+textiles+

The manufacturers may need to limit the few pthalates above, but phthalates are a very large class of chemicals and chemical cousins which are unsavory and can be used interchangeably in their place.

Now on to OSHA. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)is a part of the US Department of Labor.  OSHA is concerned with worker safety, not product safety. OSHA actually requires that any polyester or nylon fabric or any natural fiber fabric have a flame retardant treatment so as not to cause a burn on an employee’s skin. To claim that applying a flame retardant finish adheres to the highest safety standards for consumers or workers is woefully incorrect. The FR chemical profiles are so unsavory that you would never choose to bring them into your home.

We have written about FR chemicals at length in our blog, but allow us to remind you briefly:  To make an intrinsically flame retardant synthetic fiber fabric,  the most common method is to add  brominated flame retardants (BFR’s) to the polymer during the melt phase.     BFR’s are a huge chemical class.  Brominated flame retardants are persistent, accumulate in the food chain, and toxic to both humans and the environment and are suspected of causing neurobehavioral effects, endocrine disruption, cancer and other degenerative diseases.

I’d like to nominate flame retardant chemicals used in our furniture, fabrics and baby products – as well as a host of other products – as being in the running for the new asbestos.  These chemicals are called halogenated flame retardants, such as Polybrominated diphenyl ethers – commonly known as PBDE’s.  Women in North America have 10 to 40 times the levels of the PBDEs in their breast milk, as do women in Europe or in Asia. And these chemicals pass through the placenta and are found in infants at birth, making a double dose of toxins for young children when they are most vulnerable.  When tested in animals, fire retardant chemicals, even at very low doses, can cause endocrine disruption, thyroid disorders, cancer, and developmental, reproductive, and neurological problems such as learning impairment and attention deficit disorder.   In humans, these chemicals are associated with reduced IQ in children, reduced fertility; thyroid impacts, undescended testicles in infants (leading to a higher cancer risk), and decreases in sperm quality and function. Ongoing studies are beginning to show a connection between these chemicals and autism in children.  Pregnant women have the biggest cause for concern because animal studies show negative impacts on brain development of offspring when mothers are exposed during pregnancy. And bioaccumulating PBDEs can stay in our bodies for more than a decade.

A study published last week in the Environmental Health Perspectives  points to California’s unique furniture flammability standard called Technical Bulletin 117, or TB117, as the major reason for high fire retardant levels in California. The California standard, passed in 1975, requires that polyurethane foam in upholstered furniture be able to withstand an open flame for 12 seconds without catching fire. Because there is no other state or federal standard, many manufacturers comply with the California rule, usually by adding flame retardants with the foam.

The startling and disturbing result of the published study in Environmental Health Perspectives is that Latino children born in California have levels of PBDE in their blood seven times higher  than do children who were born and raised in Mexico. In general, residents of California have higher rates of PBDE in their blood than do people in other parts of the United States.

A home can contain a pound or more of fire retardants that are similar in structure and action to substances such as PCBs and DDT that are widely banned. They leak out from furniture, settle in dust and are taken in by toddlers when they put their hands into their mouths. A paper published in Environmental Science & Technology also finds high fire retardant levels in pet dogs. Cats, because they lick their fur, have the highest levels of all.(5)  PBDE use has increased 40% from 1992 to 2003, and is forecast to grow by at least 3% per year from 2011; they are ubiquitous in consumer products.

One troubling example is chlorinated Tris, a flame retardant that was removed from children’s pajamas in the 1970s largely based on research done by Dr. Arlene Blum, a biophysical chemist, after it was found to mutate DNA and identified as a probable human carcinogen.  In the journal Environmental Science and Technology, new research published in 2011 shows that chlorinated Tris was found in more than a third of the foam samples tested – products such as nursing pillows, highchairs, car seats and changing pads.

Tris is now being used at high levels in furniture being sold in California to meet the California standard.

The benefits of adding flame retardants have not been proved. Since the 1980s, retardants have been added to California furniture. From 1980 to 2004, fire deaths in states without such a standard declined at a similar rate as they did in California. And when during a fire the retardants burn, they increase the toxicity of the fire, producing dioxins, as well as additional carbon monoxide, soot and smoke, which are the major causes of fire deaths.

So why are we rolling the dice and exposing our children to substances with the potential to cause serious health problems when there is no proven fire safety benefit?

Under current law, it is difficult for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to ban or restrict chemicals – current federal oversight of chemicals is so weak that manufacturers are not required to label products with flame retardants nor are they required to list what chemicals are used. Even now, the agency has yet to ban asbestos!

“We can buy things that are BPA free, or phthalate free or lead free. We don’t have the choice to buy things that are flame-retardant free,” says Dr. Heather Stapleton, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University. “The laws protect the chemical industry, not the general public.”  What makes them so bad?

1. they are persistent:  they bioaccumulate, or build up, in fish and cats and Orcas and foxes – and people.  Our bodies cannot get rid of these contaminates, so our levels just increase over time.  We eat PBDEs when they contaminate our food, particularly meat and dairy products. They latch on to dust and other particles, so we breathe them in, or ingest them when dust settles on food or when children stuff their fingers into their mouths. Scientists look for PBDEs in breast milk because the chemicals stick to fat. In 1999, Swedish researchers reported that PBDE levels in women’s breast milk had increased 60-fold between 1972 and 1997.  Similar dramatic increases were documented in California harbor seals, ringed seals from the Arctic, gull eggs from the Great Lakes and human blood from Norway.   PBDE pollution has been found essentially everywhere scientists have looked: in the tissues of whales, seals, birds and bird eggs, moose, reindeer, mussels, eels, and fish; in human breast milk, hair, fat and blood; in hot dogs and hamburgers and the cheese we put on them;  in twenty different countries and remote areas such as the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Ocean, on top of mountains and under the sea.
2. they are fat seeking: this causes them to magnify up the food chain, increasing in concentration at each successively higher  level. Once PBDE’s are released into the environment, they invariably find their way into humans, including pregnant women, where they pass  to the developing fetus in utero or through the breast milk to the nursing infant.  As evidence of fetal exposure, the infant at birth has levels of PBDE’s that are up to 25% of maternal levels.  And researchers have found that children’s PBDE levels are about 2.8 times higher than their mothers. Research in animals shows that exposure to brominated fire retardants in-utero or during infancy leads to more significant harm than exposure during adulthood, and much lower levels of PBDEs are needed to cause harm to infants and children than to adults.
3. they are endocrine disruptors: Many of the known health effects of PBDEs are thought to stem from their ability to disrupt the body’s thyroid hormone balance, which plays an essential role in brain development.  Laboratory animals showed deficits in learning and memory with exposure to PBDE’s.   Studies of mice showed that a single exposure to PBDEs caused permanent behavioral aberrations that worsened as the mice got older.  One study, for instance, found that women whose levels of T4 measured in the lowest 10 percent of the population during the first trimester of pregnancy were more than 2.5 times as likely to have a child with an IQ of less than 85 (in the lowest 20 percent of the range of IQs) and five times as likely to have a child with an IQ of less than 70, meeting the diagnosis of “mild retardation.”

Personal choices can make a difference. Buying furniture, fabric, cell phones or computers made without PBDEs is definitely a vote for a non-toxic future. But personal choices can only go so far – and the crisis is great.   PBDEs, like other contaminant issues, are at least as much a social as a personal issue and challenge. You can help your kids not only with your buying habits, but also by modeling social action for environmental change, and by campaigning for a non-toxic future, the kind of future where mother’s milk will regain its purity.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) controls chemicals partially through use of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which was amended in 2016.

Although the law contains the words “Toxic Substances” the TSCA law  does not separate chemicals into categories of toxic and non-toxic.  In fact, of the 60,000 chemicals in use in the USA in 1976, the year of the passing of the law, all were grandfathered in as safe to use. These are known as “existing chemicals”.

1. We assume the TSCA is testing and regulating chemicals used in the industry..It is not:

Of the more than 60,000 existing chemicals  in use prior to 1976, most were “grandfathered in”; only 263 had been tested for safety and only 5 were restricted.  Today over 80,000 chemicals are routinely used in industry, and the number which have been tested for safety in tests required by the EPA has not materially changed since 1976.  So we cannot know the risks of exposing ourselves to certain chemicals.  The default position is that no information about a chemical = no action. (Thank goodness for the European Union. The great progress in the past two decades in determining toxicity and safety of many chemicals is due to their action.)

The chemical spill which occurred in West Virginia in 2014 was of “crude MCHM”, or 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, one of the chemicals that was grandfathered into the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.   That means that nobody knows for sure what that chemical can do to us.

Carcinogenic effects? No information available.

Mutagenic effects? No information available.

Developmental toxicity? No information available.

Lack of information is the reason the local and federal authorities were so unsure of how to advise the local population about their drinking water supplies.  (And by the way, in January, 2014, a federal lawsuit was filed in Charleston, WV, which claims that the manufacturer of MCHM hid “highly toxic and carcinogenic properties” of components of MCHM, hexane and methanol, both of which have been tested and found to cause diseases such as cancer.)

I found claims he EPA has been successful in restricting only nine chemicals of the 60,000 that were grandfathered in as permissible “existing Chemicals”  (PCBs, chlorofluorocarbons, dioxin, asbestos, and hexavalent chromium) in its 38-year history, with the ban on asbestos being overturned in 1991.

Until 2016 none of those chemicals were required to be tested for safety. The 2016 revision of the law requires some existing chemicals to be tested for safety, and gives deadlines for the evaluation. The first ten chemicals to be assessed as specifically required by the 2016 revisions are:

• Asbestos
• 1-Bromopropane
• Carbon Tetrachloride
• 1,4 Dioxane
• Cyclic Aliphatic Bromide Cluster (HBCD)
• Methylene Chloride
• N-Methylpyrrolidone
• Perchloroethylene
• Pigment Violet 29
• Trichloroethylene

But don’t hold your breath.  Take one of the above list:  Methylene Chloride.  The EPA assessed it beginning in 2014 and proposed a ban – at least from paint removers – in 2017, stating that the chemical posed “unnecessary risks” to people. The European Union had taken this step in 2011.  The EPA keeps delaying the ban, and has weakened it by removing one of 2 toxic chemicals in the proposed ban to just one.

Slate has an informative account of the current issue, “A Chemical in Paint Remover is A Known Killer: Why Won’t the EPA Ban It?” in which you can get a taste of the many years the EPA can delay an action or change one, even after announcing and committing to it:

https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/will-the-epa-ban-methylene-chloride.html

The Environmental Defense Fund has a good blog whose almost every entry is a repudiation of what FabricSellerA  claims about American manufacture of products being safe because of the federal government. The EDF has an interesting story about PCB’s, which Congress specifically outlawed in  1979; and how action and inaction by the EPA has allowed variants of PCBs to be still used and sold in the US now, even after the 2016 TSCA revisions:

http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/09/28/have-we-learned-anything-in-the-last-4-decades-when-it-comes-to-allowing-chemicals-like-pcbs-onto-the-market/#more-8177

2. We assume that the TSCA requires manufacturers to demonstrate that their chemicals are safe before they go into use. It does not:
   1. The EPA requires a “Premanufacture Notification” of a new chemical, and no data of any kind is required.   The EPA receives between 40-50 each week and 8 out of 10 are approved, with or without test data, with no restrictions on their proposed use. As 3M puts it on their PMN forms posted on EPA’s web site, “You are not required to submit the listed test data if you do not have it.”
   2. The TSCA says the government has to prove actual harm caused by the chemical in question before any controls can be put in place.  The catch-22 is that chemical companies don’t have to develop toxicity data or submit it to the EPA for an existing product unless the agency finds out that it will pose a risk to humans or the environment – which is difficult to do if there is no data in the first place.  Lack of evidence of harm is taken as evidence of no harm.
   3. We assume that manufacturers must list all ingredients in a product, so if we have an allergy or reaction to certain chemicals we can check to see if the product is free of those chemicals. It does not.

The TSCA allows chemical manufacturers to keep ingredients in some products secret.   Nearly 20% of the 80,000 chemicals in use today are considered “trade secrets”.  This makes it impossible for consumers to find out what’s actually in a product.  And there is no time limit on the period in which a chemical can be considered a trade secret.

These limitations all help to perpetuate the chemical industry’s failure to innovate toward safer chemical and product design.  It’s one of the reasons the USA is one of the few nations in the world in which asbestos is not banned.  The EPA has issued regulations to control only 9 chemicals since the enactment of TSCA and the EPA has assessed the risks of only about 2% of the chemicals in use.

On June 22, 2016, President Obama signed the bill that reforms the Toxic Substances Control Act.  It was widely agreed that the TSCA is not doing the job of protecting us, and that the United States is in need of profound change in this area. The chemicals market values function, price and performance over safety, which poses a barrier to the scientific and commercial success of green chemistry in the United States and could ultimately hinder the U.S. chemical industry’s competitiveness in the global marketplace as green technologies accelerate under the European Union’s requirements.

we presumably would have an EPA with a mandate to review all chemicals in commerce, the authority to readily get the data it needs, and the resources required to execute the kind of comprehensive prioritization scheme ACC proposes.

So far the improvements in the 2016 revision have not resulted in any safety testing being accomplished, but rather the establishment of a horrendous bureaucracy for evaluation which chemicals need to be evaluated after the first 30 which were mandated.

We cover above the chemicals outlawed in various products by US regulators. There are not many – and most are not regulated in the end usage of fabric at all.   Here are the requirements for fabrics – mostly applying to children:

• Section 101(a) of the CPSIA restricts children’s products, including children’s apparel and sleepwear, to a lead content limit of 100 parts per million (ppm). In addition, the use of paint or similar surface coating on children’s apparel and sleepwear must not exceed a lead content limit of 90 ppm. That compares to the Oeko-Tex 100andGOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) requirement that the lead content be 2 ppm.
• Section 108 of CPSIA states that children’s toys and child care articles cannot contain more that 0.1% of six phthalates – DEHP, DBP, BBP limits are applicable to both toys and child care items while DINP, DIDP, and DnOP limits are applicable only to toys that can be placed in the mouth and are intended for children 3 and younger. Although children’s clothing does not need to be certified to this requirement, children’s sleepwear or bibs (child care article) intended for children age 3 years or younger and any children’s textile product that is intended for use in play (toy) must be certified to the phthalates requirements. In comparison to Oeko-Tex 100 and GOTS, all phthalates are prohibited.
• Textiles used in apparel must meet class 1 or 2 flammability requirements. Children’s sleepwear must be flame resistant and self-extinguish when exposed to a small ignition source. The rules cover all children’s sleepwear between size 9 months and size 14. The fabric, seams, trim, and garments must pass certain flammability tests or the garment must be tight-fitting as defined by specified dimensions. ( See our blog post on flame retardants , published in May, 2013) But this rule means that toxic chemicals are often added to children’s sleepwear – not kept out of it.

What does this mean? It means that the United States has basically no protection for consumers in terms of textiles.

So, I have many bones to pick with FabricsellerA, who ignores the weak protections that the federal government provides to protect us from the real safety issues from fabric production and chemicals residual in the fabric that is everywhere around us.  The United States has precious few protections for consumers or for workers regarding fabric safety issues while Oeko-Tex does an excellent job of protecting consumers of fabric, though not workers.

The Unabridged Post: from FabricsellerA:

FabricsellerA consumers are savvy consumers. We often receive inquiries from our customers asking if FabricsellerA fabrics are OEKO-TEX certified. They are not OEKO-TEX certified, and here’s why this is a good thing:

 OEKO-TEX® is an international association headquartered in Europe, comprised of independent research and test laboratories – focused on the textile industry – which certifies that fabrics meet safety standards for consumer use. OEKO-TEX 100 is the organization’s global testing and certification program that ensures textile products are tested for more than 300 harmful chemicals.

 It’s often difficult for resellers of fabrics made in China, India, or other countries, to discern how the fabrics are being made, and what chemicals are being used in their manufacture. That’s why it’s important that the fabrics they sell have an OEKO-TEX certificate or equivalent; this indicates that the fabrics meet strict health and safety standards, and are safe to use. For the benefit of consumers there is an online directory that lists all products, companies, and brands that are OEKO-TEX certified

 While OEKO-TEX certification is a stringent process, many of the requirements for this certification are not applicable to our American-made products. That’s why FabricsellerA fabrics are not OEKO-TEX certified—because our fabrics are made right here in the USA . We adhere to the even more demanding American health and safety standards, and ensure that no harmful chemicals are used in the production of our fabrics.

 In the United States, all the fabric manufacturers, including FabricsellerA, produce their fabrics under the safety guidelines and regulations set forth by several government agencies. These agencies include the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 The CPSC is the agency that regulates the sale and manufacture of consumer products, and ultimately certifies a fabric as compliant and approved for sale in the United States, in accordance with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). The CPSIA compliance certification ensures that the products you use every day have met the most stringent, comprehensive American health and safety standards.

 Fabrics made or sold in America must not only meet CPSIA requirements, but manufacturing must comply with EPA, OSHA, and other regulations, which makes themeven more rigorous than the OEKO-TEX test criteria. This is why OEKO-TEX certification is not required in the United States. These strict measures guarantee the highest levels of safety, not only for the consumers who use the fabrics, but also for the health and safety of those who make them, and environmental protection.

 In addition to FabricsellerA’s ongoing mission and commitment to bringing you safe, high-quality products for your use, our fabrics are, of course, CPSIA Compliant. They meet the highest standards of health and safety in the world.

 END POST

[1]On average, 78% of the weight of a fabric is the fiber it purports to be, and 22% is residual chemicals.  W. Baumann, K. Lacasse, Textile Chemicals: Environmental Data and Facts, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004

[2]If you don’t know what flame retardants can do to you, please see our blog https://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/?s=pbde

 (3) Some of the more common BFR’s are: Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE’s):  besides PBDE, the group includes DecaBDE, OctaBDE and PentaBDE (neither Octa nor Penta is manufactured anymore); Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) – also not manufactured anymore; Brominated cyclohydrocarbons

[4]Martin, Andrew, “Chemical Suspected in Cancer is in Baby products”, The New York Times, May 17, 2011.

[5]Vernier, Marta and Hites, Ronald; “Flame Retardants in the Serum of Pet Dogs and in their Food”, Environmental Science and Technology, 2011, 45 (10), pp4602-4608. http://pubs.acs.org/action/doSearchaction=search&searchText=PBDE+levels+in+pets&qsSearchArea=searchText&type=within