Interview With Andrew Morgan: The Director of The True Cost

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The film The True Cost is a story about clothing. It is about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider: Who really pays the price for our clothing?

Dana Geffner, Executive Director of Fair World Project, sat down with the Director of The True Cost to learn why this story was so important to tell and what we as consumers can do to stop exploitation in the clothing industry.

Q:  Why did you decide to make this movie and tell this story?

Andrew:  I do not have a background in fashion and never thought about making this kind of film. I started to become interested about the role that business plays in the world in relation to human rights, extreme poverty, inequality and environmental impact. I began to believe that solutions to our problems will invariably be through business. As a filmmaker, it was too big to tackle, and I could not get my arms around that film. Then I picked up the newspaper and read about this clothing factory collapsing in Rana Plaza [in Bangladesh] and read that, at the time of the collapse, they were making clothes for major western brands that I knew. I read this horrifying account of how something I interact with every day in my world is having this unseen impact in other peoples’ lives all over the world. That instantly grabbed me, and within a week, we decided this was a film we wanted to make.

Q:  The film shows locations from all over the world. Where did you go, and whom did you interview?

Andrew:  We filmed in thirteen countries. This needed to be a global film because it is one of the true major global issues of our times. It does not matter what country you live in, this affects human beings, and I wanted to make a film that went to so many places that you almost forgot where you were. So the focus is not really on the place, but rather that it is our shared home. So that took us to really rich, beautiful parts of the world. We filmed during all the major fashion weeks in London, Paris, Milan, New York and Los Angeles. It also took us all over Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India and Uganda. The focus was really on the stories of the people we followed.

We followed a twenty-two year-old garment worker named Shima Akter who works in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We followed a woman named Safia Minney, who owns a fair trade clothing company called People Tree, in London and Tokyo. And then we followed a cotton farmer in Luc, Texas named Lorey Pepper. Around those three stories we met a whole bunch of experts, from economists to really big influencers in the fashion space, and both activists and traditional designers, people like Stella McCartney and brands like Patagonia.

Q:  How has the fashion industry changed?

Andrew:  One of the startling facts is that the world consumes 400% more clothing right now than it did two decades ago. The world now makes between 80-90 billion new articles of clothing each year. This has created a real shift; clothing historically has been something we made with great intentionality and integrity, something we held onto our whole lives and even passed on to our children. It was something we valued.

The impacts of a global economy have allowed us to offshore labor, cut costs and produce mass quantities of clothing much more cheaply. Clothing has now become a commodity that we see as disposable, and that is really brand new in the history of fashion. It is a very modern concept to be able to buy things that are so cheap that it means nothing if they fall apart after a few wears. That volume increase and shift in mindset have turned up the dial on some already very problematic issues, making it now nothing short of a state of crisis or emergency in a lot of areas.

Q:  The term “fast fashion” is talked about in the film. What is fast fashion?

Andrew:  “Fast fashion” is a term that parallels “fast food” and implies that it probably is not very good for us. Fast fashion was initiated when brands began to copy design looks from runway shows. They put them through production and manufacturing at lightning speeds in order to have them in stores within weeks, and sometimes days, after they were seen on the runways.

But this supply chain is dangerously fast and precariously volatile. We are incentivizing a constant state of rush, a constant state of “How fast can we get it there?” and “What corners can we cut?” Those cut corners led to the egregious and extreme cases of human exploitation and tragedy that have recently grabbed the world’s attention.

Q:  Why is fast fashion happening? Who is demanding it?

Andrew:  From one standpoint, we live in a market-driven, consumer-based, consumption-fueled economy. The mandatory ingredient for our economy to grow is for consumption to be kept very high all the time. Our standard economic model only measures profit, while many of the costs that go into making things are unseen. We do not factor in the use of natural resources, like water and other resources that are increasingly scarce in parts of the world where things are being made. People want to buy the cheapest things. As consumers, we judge products on whether they look good and are cheap. So, in that regard, the market incentivizes the lowest-quality product.

We can also look at it in another way – a lot of essential items have become more expensive, like insurance, homes, a college education and healthcare, while other things have become less expensive, like clothing. So when my life feels less in my control, I can find therapy in buying something super-cheap. So, as the middle class gets squeezed an

d is unable to control the prices of these essential items, then there is a natural movement towards feeling in control by buying these cheap pieces of clothing.

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Stark Warning on Health of Oceans

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Author: Tim Radford | Published: May 4, 2017 

Ocean acidification and global warming between them could severely damage the health of the oceans.

They could block the biological process that delivers nitrogen in the seawater to nourish micro-organisms. They could spark growth among the invertebrates but cause stress higher up the food web to destabilise the balance of marine life. And they could even create conditions that would make great stretches of oceans toxic.

Toxic oceans

The first two are possibilities based on laboratory experiments and warn of what could happen as the world warms, the climates change and the chemistry of the oceans continues to become more acidic. But the third may already be happening.

Marine scientists from Stony Brook University in New York state report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they looked at ocean temperature data and the growth of two of the most toxic algae in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.

They have found that, since 1982, areas of these oceans have warmed and become more hospitable to Alexandrium and Dinophysis, two genera of micro-organism with species that manufacture neurotoxins that can cause paralytic and diarrhoetic shellfish poisoning in humans.

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The Eco Guide to Laundry

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Author:  Lucy Siegle  | Published: May 7, 2017 

I almost yearn for the days when 80% of a garment’s ecological impact was down to the phosphates and optical brighteners in detergent. Oh, and climate emissions from the energy used to heat the water.

Cleaning up all that was straightforward: turn the machine down to 30C and use an eco detergent.

But now there’s another laundry menace in town: microfibres (defined as particles under 5mm). According to research by Plymouth University, washing 6kg of clothes can result in anything between 137,951 fibres (for polyester-cotton clothes) to 728,789 fibres (for acrylic clothes) released as oceanic pollution.

A study from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, confirmed that microfibres evading sewage treatment works can be ingested by fish larvae. Scientists are studying the effects of this on the food chain, but it’s unlikely to be positive.

In terms of plastic fibre volume, a city the size of Berlin may be responsible for releasing the equivalent of 540,000 plastic bags’ worth of them into the ocean daily.

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T.Goreau: Extended Abstract in Press UN FAO Global Conference on Soil Organic Carbon

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Author: Thomas J. Goreau | Published on: May 3, 2017

Today’s CO2 atmosphere concentrations will lead to devastating increases in global temperatures and sea level over the thousands of years that cold deep ocean waters warm up, even if no more fossil fuel CO2 is added. Long-term impacts shown by climate records are much greater than IPCC projections, which are politically mandated to only include short-term initial responses. They ignore 90% or more of the long-term climate impacts that will affect future generations for millions of years unless CO2 is rapidly reduced to pre-industrial levels, giving policy makers a false sense of security. Even complete emissions reductions cannot remove the existing CO2 excess already in the atmosphere, only increased carbon sinks can do so, and only soil has the capacity to store it in time to avert runaway climate change. CO2 can be reduced to safe levels in decades if 1) current carbon farming sequestration practices are applied on a large scale, 2) lifetime of soil carbon storage is increased with biochar, and 3) with large scale restoration of coastal marine wetland peat soils, especially using new electrical stimulation methods. Regenerative Development strategies to reverse climate change by increasing soil and biomass carbon need to be implemented by UNFCCC.

Climate change strategies claiming that 2 degrees C warming or 350 ppm are “acceptable” sentence coral reefs and low lying countries to death. Corals are already at their upper temperature limit (Goreau & Hayes, 1994). The last time global temperatures were 1-2 C warmer than today, sea levels were 6-8 meters higher, equatorial coral reefs died from heat, crocodiles and hippotamuses lived in London, England, yet CO2 was only 270 ppm (Goreau, 1990; Koenigswald, 2006, 2011).

CO2 in the atmosphere (>400ppm) is already way above the pre-industrial (270ppm) levels consistent with modern global temperature and sea level, and millions of years of ice core and deep sea climate records show that current atmospheric CO2 levels will lead, over thousands of years, to steady state global temperatures and sea levels around 17 degrees Celsius and 23 meters higher than modern levels (Goreau 1990, 2014; Rohling et al., 2009).

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We Have No Idea How Bad Fashion Actually Is for the Environment

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Author: Alden Wicker | Published: March 15, 2017 

My journey down the rabbit hole started with this fact: “The global fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world.” You’ll hear this repeated at panels, on blogs and news sites, and anywhere else sustainable fashion is being discussed.

Intuitively, it sounds true. We’ll start with the fact that an estimated 50 million tons of polyester — a petroleum product — were produced in 2015. Growing cotton, especially if it involves pesticides, herbicides, and oil-powered machinery, is also a large carbon emitter (though not as large as polyester). And then there is the journey the multiple components of one garment take around the world on oil-gulping ships to be spun in one country, then sewn in another factory powered by coal and generators, then finished in yet another, buttons and zippers from another continent, packaged, and shipped to stores, briefly worn, tossed into the landfill (which emits the potent greenhouse gas methane), or shipped back around the world to secondhand markets.

But when I searched for the source, I couldn’t find it. No study, no official report. I asked every sustainable fashion industry expert I knew. Several said they would get back to me. A couple of experts pointed me to the Danish Fashion Institute, which in turn disavowed the fact.

“The report it was associated with has been pulled by its authors and the Danish Fashion Institute has been trying to walk this back since it accidentally used it in a press release,” Jason Kibbey, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, told me in an email. “It’s often quoted, and could theoretically be true, but at this point, I don’t have any credible facts to assess where the fashion industry would rank.”

“We don’t believe the statement to be accurate either, but we are aware that it has become a popular misconception,” the Danish Fashion Institute said in an email. “We can, however, tell you that fashion is one of the most resource-intensive industries in the world, both in terms of natural resources and human resources.” They said they would be announcing a report in May attempting to clarify its impact.

Another fact floating around says that fashion accounts for 10 percent of global emissions. That was pulled from a 2010 Textile World article, written by an Italian salesman of textile equipment. But it is actually referencing the entire textile industry, not just fashion, which could include rugs, bed linens, engine belts, automotive carpets, and all manner of other very unfashionable things. And there’s no way to know if it’s true — when Textile World changed management, the fact-checking binders were lost, and the author of this article didn’t respond to my messages.

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Fighting Climate Change on the Farm

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Author: Kevin Ma | Published on: April 26, 2017

U of A scientists will study new ways to stop climate change this summer at a farm just north of St. Albert with the help of a federal grant.

Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced $3.7 million in grants for researchers at the University of Alberta last Friday. The grants are part of the federal Agricultural Greenhouse Gases Program and are meant to create practices and technologies farmers can use to reduce carbon emissions.

“Farmers have a key role to play in feeding the world and saving the planet,” MacAulay said, and have already taken significant steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with wheat and beef production.

Agriculture accounts for about 10 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, reports Environment Canada – equivalent to the annual emissions of about 7.7 million homes or 21.2 coal power plants for a year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

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Rooting the Fashion Revolution in the Soil

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Author: Jess Daniels | Published: May 3, 2017  

This year’s Fashion Revolution Week just wrapped up but the movement for transparency, accountability, and shifting the norms of a harmful and wasteful industry is gaining more traction and momentum than ever.

Born out of tragedy, the Fashion Revolution campaign began with just one day and one question to honor the nearly 1200 lives lost and innumerable others forever changed when the Rana Plaza Factory collapsed due to structural damages ignored by management, causing the greatest garment worker disaster in history. Because fashion is a consumer-based industry, the burden falls not only in the hands of the corporations contracting with clothing manufacturers but on all of us who make choices each time we shop, choices to unwaveringly support a supply chain, or to question its impacts and motivations, or to pursue a more just and ecologically sound path.

Since 2013 it seems a call to action has reverberated through the fashion industry and through so many of us who have awoken to the recognition of our role as wearers of clothing.

Photo: Modeling regenerative fashion with the Grow Your Jeans project, by Paige Green Photography.

Here in the Fibershed community, we have seen our Northern California community flourish with  a fashion show that re-envisions denim as a place-based and fossil-fuel-free garment; we have supported the shift of the world’s largest textile corporation in creating their first ‘re-shored’ supply chain right here in their own backyard; we have nurtured the swell of the soil to soil movement in over 50 Fibershed Affiliate communities worldwide; and we have created an economic model for funding on-farm climate solutions through community-powered textile programs.

It’s hard to become aware of the issues, or even one aspect of the impacts, of modern fashion and not be discouraged. For an industry that relies on agriculture, manufacturing, shipping & transport, washing, waste and recycling systems – sectors that all told account for 59% of global greenhouse gas emissions¹ – we can’t even definitively say exactly how bad fashion is for the climate.

We need more research and life cycle assessments and internalization of the carbon cost of clothing, but here is an early indicator of how deep & far-reaching this industry goes: recent studies show that synthetic microfiber pollution is 131 times worse than initially reported (just 6 years ago)² – this microscopic pollution amounts to two hundred million microfibers per person on earth, and more by the second. Yes, as I’m typing this or you’re reading this, our poly-cotton t-shirts or spandex-blend yoga pants or feel-good recycled fleeces are shedding into our washing machines and heading out into waterways. A tip of the proverbial iceberg (which, unfortunately, also contains plastic fibers).

Yet consider that this research, despite its relatively short-lived publication, has spawned the start of creative solutions. From microfiber-trapping laundry balls to differences in material development to industrial filters, we’re seeing pragmatic and iterative options along the supply chain.

Photo: regional supply chain partner and Fibershed member Huston Textile Co., by Paige Green Photography

Climate scientists say that one of the most difficult challenges in addressing climate change is that humans have a hard time understanding things we haven’t experienced³. Our species has a hard time tackling the unimaginable, and perhaps that’s why it took a heartbreaking disaster to bring forth the Fashion Revolution. Maybe that’s why studies and video campaigns about microfibers – a pollution problem so big yet so microscopic it’s invisible – are leading the way for solutions engineering.

So if we don’t know precisely how to encompass and measure fashion’s climate footprint, let’s focus on a few key pieces we do know. We know that natural fibers not only eliminate the microfiber-shedding pollution created by synthetics (which will never biodegrade), and that natural fibers begin with the soil instead of with fossil fuels extracted from the earth. Right now we have tipped the scales so that the majority of the world’s fibers are made from plastic, which is made from fossilized carbon stocks, the release of which directly contributes to climate change.

Photo: rebuilding soil with compost application, by Paige Green Photography

We know that topsoil is degraded on working lands around the world*, but that there are strategies and practices that use natural systems instead of chemical inputs to build soil health. And we know that these practices, with proper planning and management, can even increase soil carbon, meaning that they help mitigate climate change.

For instance: the carbon farm plan from one of our members has calculated that soil-building practices will offset greenhouse emissions equivalent to taking 180 cars off the road each year in perpetuity.

And we know that such working lands, in our Fibershed and around the world, can produce incredible natural fibers, from naturally colored cotton to next-to-skin soft wool, sturdy bast fibers like hemp and flax linen, luxurious alpaca and other fine fibers, and coarse wool that makes cozy bedding and durable goods. With fibers in hand, there are still mills across the US that can serve as supply chain partners and avoid transcontinental shipping, and  by blending different natural fibers we can create textiles with amazing material properties that keep us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, allow our skin to breath, and that last a long time in our wardrobe or home.

Photo: in the indigo research plot, harvsting regional natural dyes, by Paige Green Photography

While we know that most synthetic dyes cause harm to our waterways and endocrine system**, we see a growing community of natural dyeing teachers, practitioners, and innovators who are growing, foraging, and making color that honors place (our indigo project, Artisan Producer directory, and community events calendar are great places to start connecting).

With the Fashion Revolution campaign encouraging all to ask ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ we see more avenues for transparency, accountability, and education coming online.

Consumer care processes are actually 23% of the carbon footprint of a piece of clothing***, and we see consumers engaging with the supply chain and becoming prosumers – caring about proper washing, altering, mending, and wearing items for longer – we know more and more how vast textile waste is — with an average of 70 lbs per person each year heading to landfill — and both individuals and brands are addressing it by buying less or upcycling materials. Finally, we know students, artisans, and brands from small to large, are designing for change – looking at the full circular economy of clothing and anticipating a return to the landscape instead of a trip to the landfill when worn out.

Photo: Peggy Sue Collection 2017, via Peggy Sue Collection

With the Fashion Revolution underway, we need to dig down to the soil level. We need to ask deeper questions of brands and ourselves about each material ingredient and process throughout the life of a garment; we need scientists and activists to take the fashion industry seriously as a contributor to global climate change, and we need to invest in Climate Beneficial systems.

Let’s also extend the Fashion Revolution beyond one day or week of the year: we invite you to get to know your fibershed firsthand, to get to know a fiber farmer or take a natural dyeing class or become a prosumer by knitting a local shawl or making an outfit that’s grown and sewn close to home. If we struggle to take collective action to combat climate change because we can’t quite envision its impacts, or because our political climate refuses to address it, we know we can root ourselves in the soil, build community through educational and economic relationships, and take part in revolutionizing fashion from the ground up with our very own hands, together.

Jess Daniels provides research, communications strategy, and project management for Fibershed. She coordinates the Fibershed Affiliate Network and is an avid maker and explorer of slow fashion. 

Re-posted with permission from Fibershed. See the original article here.

Seeing the Pasture for the Trees

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Published on: April 19, 2017

RONKS, Pa. — Shaded pastures are among the more challenging conditions faced by anyone trying to establish a productive pasture. This scenario varies but often involves a grazier who wants to set up a very intentional form of silvopasture, managing both trees and forage to balance the productivity of both.

To be clear, there is no forage crop you can grow well under full leaf canopy. Plants need some sunlight to perform photosynthesis, manufacture sugars, and grow.  Although the ideal balance of needed conditions differs for each plant, there are also a set of basic requirements for any plant to thrive.

Depending on the available sunlight, a shady area can result in a thinner stand. The less robust growth will also be less resilient to outside impacts like traffic or overgrazing. Shading reduces height of the forage species that have a naturally upright growth habit, and also leads to less tiller production. However, in shade tolerant species, leaf area and both shoot-to-root and leaf-to-stem ratios may be increased.  With less active cell division and growth, sugars are also apt to concentrate in the plant.

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Patagonia’s New Clothes Are Made From Poop and Dried Beetles

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Author: Eleanor Goldberg | Published: April 28, 2017 

Patagonia is putting bug poop in its new clothing line. You heard that right.

In an effort to dye its clothes without using toxic chemicals, the green-minded apparel company is making its new Clean Color Collection with natural dyes sourced from 96 percent renewable resources. Those include dyes derived from the poop of silkworms, dried beetles and byproducts of food waste, Patagonia announced Thursday.

“Why the alchemy?” the company said in a press release about its new experiment. “Because dye is dirty.”

The apparel line debuts at a time when consumers are increasingly aware of the hazardous materials used to produce clothing, even among big-name brands.

In 2012, Greenpeace conducted a major investigation into the contents of clothing items from 20 global fashion brands ― including Armani, Levi’s and Zara. Among its findings, it concluded that two articles of clothing from Zara contained cancer-causing amines from its use of azo dyes. Just days after Greenpeace published its report, Zara committed to going “toxic free” by 2020.

Patagonia said that many of its synthetic dyes use less water, energy and carbon dioxide than its competitors do, but it’s looking to further reduce its environmental impact.

Patagonia is also addressing the food waste crisis by incorporating byproducts of food waste into the line. Across the world, one-third of the food produced is lost or squandered. These byproducts are being saved from decomposing in landfills, where they’d otherwise release methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas.

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Chemicals in Textiles: Risks to Human Health and the Environment

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Published: 2004

The Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemikalieinspektionen) was assigned by the Swedish government to compile available and relevant information about the risks to human health and the environment from hazardous substances in textile articles. The intention of this report is to serve as a base for further work on developing risk reduction measures for hazardous substances in textiles at the EU level. The study includes three main parts: a. An overview of textile consumption in the EU and Sweden. b. A screening study with the aim to identify hazardous substances/groups of substances posing a potential risk to human health and the environment. c. A literature study of data on exposures and effects related to hazardous substances in textiles.

Increasing consumption of textile articles and use of chemicals The consumption of textile articles has increased rapidly in the EU during the last decades. Textile materials are produced in large quantities and are included in a broad variety of widely used consumer articles. Chapter 3 presents an overview of consumption of textile materials and articles in the EU and Sweden.

Increasing production and consumption of textile articles also mean an increased use of chemicals and raw materials. Large quantities of chemical substances are used in the production of textiles, from processing of fibres and raw materials to the final touch of the finished article.

Substances used in the production of textiles can remain in the final article as minor contaminant amounts, and articles may also contain substances formed by degradation. Other substances are intentionally added to textile articles in order to provide a specified function, such as colour or easy-care. Substances in textile materials may be released from articles and expose humans and the environment. Textile articles are used in a way that both consumers the environment can be exposed to chemicals released from the articles. An overview is presented in Chapter 4.

Information is needed in the production- and supply chains

Although large quantities of substances are included in textile production, there is no comprehensive overview of hazardous substances that may be present in textile articles placed on the market.

To assess the chemical risks related to the use of textile articles it is necessary to have information about the identity of the substances and their hazardous properties. Access to information on the contents of hazardous substances in textile materials and articles is important for the manufacturers, importers and suppliers along the production and supply chains.

The requirement in the REACH Regulation, Article 33 (Section 2.1.1) concerning the duty on suppliers to provide information on hazardous substances in articles is limited to Substances of Very High Concern that are listed on the Candidate list. Thus, this duty to provide information does not included e.g. dermal allergens. 7

The majority, approximately 80%, of the textile articles consumed in the EU are imported from a non-EU country, and it is also common to import semi-finished textile materials while the article is finally manufactured and labelled in the EU. The textile supply chains are often long and complex with a global span and important information is drastically decreasing in the many steps from producer to consumer. The flow of chemical information in the supply chains is generally not adequate. The knowledge about chemical contents in textile articles should be made more readily available by increasing and improving the information exchange along the supply chain.

One step towards improved information exchange along the supply chain is the international initiatives in the SAICM programme Chemicals in Products (Section 2.3). The legal information requirement on suppliers of substances in articles needs to be further developed.

Identifying chemical substances related to textile articles

The study presented in Chapter 6 was performed to identify substances with a reported use in textile production. The REACH registration (Section 2.1.1) is one source of knowledge since data for hazardous properties and recommended use for substances should be included in the registration. Further data was also collected from several databases.

The focus of the screening study was to identify substances of potential risk to human health and the environment. Approximately 3 500 substances were identified as relevant for use in textile. However, the actual use and the presence in the final textile articles have not been verified for all these substances. It should be noted that this identification approach managed to cover only a part of all the substances that may be found in textile articles.

Of the identified substances about 2 000 substances are not yet registered under REACH. Due to the volume limit for registration and the limited obligations to register substances present in imported articles, the REACH registration data is insufficient for risk assessment of many substances used in textiles. In some cases REACH registration data for risk assessments was not easily accessible for evaluations of specific uses, and for about one third of the identified substances the REACH registrations was the only source indicating textile use.

Improved quality of data and increased availability in the REACH registration would facilitate and improve the decision-making regarding risk reduction measures for hazardous substances in textiles.

The focus of this study is functional chemicals as they are expected to be present in textiles at relatively high concentrations. However, auxiliary chemicals and unintended degradation products may also be present in the textiles and cause harmful effects on human health and the environment, but these types of substances are not covered by screening study due to the limitations.

Substances of potential risk to human health

Approximately ten percent of the identified 2 400 textile-related substances are considered to be of potential risk to human health. These substances are all functional chemicals, which are expected to be present in the final article at relatively high concentrations, and include azo dyes of direct and acid application type and fragrance. There may also be other types of substances, such as auxiliary chemicals and impurities/degradation products, that can be of potential risk to the human health. The concentration of such substances are generally lower 8 in the final textile article than the concentration of functional chemicals and therefore they were excluded from the scope of the screening study.

The identified azo dyes of direct application type have properties that are associated with an increased risk of cancer and developmental effects, whereas the identified azo dyes of acid application type and fragrances have properties that are associated with an increased risk of allergy.

The relevance of azo dyes was also confirmed by studies in the open literature. Azo dyes of direct application type are mainly used in cotton textile while azo dyes of acid application type are mainly used in polyamide. Since both cotton and polyamide are common materials on the EU market there is a potential for large-scale human exposure to azo dyes of direct and acid application type. These dyes are loosely bound to textile fibres and in particular small children sucking or chewing on textiles could be highly exposed. The dyes also have properties indicating that they are persistent in the environment and may accumulate in the aquatic food chain, which could lead to an indirect exposure of humans through dietary intake. For small children, ingestion of indoor dust, which to a large part consists of textile fibres, may also be an important exposure route to textile-related substances for small children, especially since textiles constitute a large part of the surface in the indoor environment.

The presence of hazardous substances in textiles, including azo dyes of direct and acid application type, should be further investigated.

Carcinogenic, reprotoxic and/or sensitising substances (allergens) should be avoided in articles with direct and prolonged skin contact. Although the methods we used to identify substances of potential risk involve many assumptions and limitations, the results are consistent and give reasons for further investigations, especially of azo dyes of direct and acid application type but also fragrances.

Substances that may cause severe health effects should be avoided in articles with direct and prolonged skin contact.

The overall scientific literature points out disperse dyes as the main cause of textile-related allergic skin reactions and disperse dyes were also identified as substances of concern in our screening study. In addition to the disperse dyes, we identified acid dyes as a group of sensitising substances of potential risk to human health that previously have not been associated with textile-allergy to any great extent. It is thus likely that the disperse dyes is not the cause of all reported cases of allergic skin reactions, for example certain acid dyes could also cause cases of allergic skin reactions.

Based on the findings of our screening study more than 200 allergenic textile-related substances, as for example acid-type dyes, could contribute substantially to allergic skin reactions. The testing of dermal allergy to sensitising dye substances used in textiles should be developed. Substances of potential risk to the environment Approximately five percent of the identified 2 400 textile-related substances are considered to be of potential risk to the environment. These chemicals are all functional chemicals which are expected to be present in the final article at relatively high concentrations. The evaluation of the function chemical substances clearly pointed out azo dyes of direct and acid application type as substance groups of potential risk to the environment. The 2 400 substances also include auxiliary chemicals or impurities.

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