Textile Chemicals - Helpful or Harmful?
Mention the word chemicals, and people tend to recoil, assuming that all chemicals are harmful. Dig a bit deeper and it would, in fact, be difficult to imagine our lives without them. Indeed, without chemicals in our lives, our health may well suffer, as would many other aspects of our day to day lives.
Many chemicals are used in the textile industry, to provide features which provide desirable functionality in clothing and household fabrics. For example, without the chemicals used in the processing our clothes, it would be hard to avoid pilling and creases, and we wouldn’t be able to enhance the brightness of our whites, and the dyeing of our clothing would not be as colour fast.
Without chemicals, we would not have the following functionality in our clothes:
- flame resistance;
- moisture management;
- stain repellence; and
- water resistance.
There are some chemicals which are known to be hazardous and are therefore being phased out or, in some cases, prohibited. These include:
- C8 fluorocarbon products (PFCs);
- formaldehyde;
- phthalate based levelling agents;
- aromatic and chlorinated hydrocarbon-based carriers; and
- aminoethylethanolamine (AEEA)-based softeners.
Meanwhile, chemical companies are constantly innovating to produce cleaner, safer chemistry. Some of these products include:
- softeners and wicking agents based on refined vegetable components;
- softeners and wicking agents from beeswax; and
- fluorocarbon-free durable water repellents (DWRs) based on renewable feedstock chemistry.
OEKO-TEX® provides certifications and product labels which enable companies along the textile chain, as well as consumers, to make informed decisions about their choice of products, so that they can choose those which are safe, environmentally friendly and manufactured in a fair way. As an OEKO-TEX® member institute for 27 years, and with over 100 years’ experience in textile testing, Shirley® have a long history of providing safe textiles to consumers.
The OEKO-TEX® MADE IN GREEN labels help consumers to identify textiles which have been tested for specific hazardous substances and also manufactured under sustainable working conditions.
