How Poisonous Is Your T-Shirt?

Poisons Are in Clothes Too...
Being the savvy, health-conscious food consumer you are, you probably aren’t shopping in the GMO aisle of your favorite grocery store - but are you stocking your closet with clothes made from Monsanto’s toxic GMO cotton?

It takes about one-third of a pound of toxic agricultural chemicals to produce one pound of cotton—the amount of cotton needed to make one t-shirt.  Many of those chemicals, including glyphosate, are linked to CANCER. Do you really want to wrap your body’s largest organ, your skin, in cancer-causing chemicals?  Those chemicals are absorbed into your body through your skin!

Chemical contamination is just one reason to care about wearing clothes made from GMO cotton—there are plenty of others, including environmental contamination, and the fact that most non-organic (and unfortunately, some organic) cotton clothing is made in sweatshops.  These workers, predominantly women, are not only underpaid but also suffer from unsafe working conditions, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, 18-hour work shifts and other illegal labor practices.


We Are Not Only What We Eat - But Also What We Wear
The fashion industry, where toxic chemicals abound, promotes a toxic “fast fashion” culture designed to convince consumers that their self-worth depends largely on keeping up with the latest fashion.  Can we as consumers clean up the fashion industry, by rejecting its message?  And choosing a more conscious approach to buying clothes and textiles?
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Start to Care What We Wear?
Read ‘Beyond Monsanto's GMO Cotton: Why Consumers Need to Care What We Wear’
http://ronnie.organicconsumers.org/beyond-monsantos-gmo-cotton-why-consumers-need-to-care-what-we-wear/

Monsanto’s new super-toxic GMO dicamba-resistant cotton is already wreaking havoc across the U.S. But even beyond Monsanto’s latest “Frankencotton,” there are a myriad of reasons why we need to start paying as much attention to what we wear as we do to what we eat.

The U.S. is the largest clothing and apparel market in the world, with 2016 sales of approximately $350 billion. The average American household spends about four percent of its income on clothing, more than one-third of what we spend on food.

If Americans are what we wear, then we—even the most rebel youth, conscious women, organic consumers, and justice advocates—judged by what we wear (not just what we say) are increasingly corporatized. The fashion statement we’re apparently making with what we wear is that we don’t care. A look at the labels in our clothing, or the corporate logos on our shoes, reveals that the brand name bullies, the transnational giants in the garment and apparel industry, reign supreme.

Walk into any department store or clothing retailer. Look for a label that says “certified Organic Cotton or Wool and Fair Trade.” Search through rack after rack, in-store after store, but you aren’t likely to find very many items that are non-GMO, organic and Fair Trade certified.

There are, however, a growing number of online and retail clothing companies and brands, which offer non-sweatshop, natural fiber, and organic clothes, accessories, and textiles. These companies include Patagonia, PACT, Under the Canopy, Fibershed, Savory Institute, TS Designs, Maggie’s Organics, Indigenous, Hempy’s, and many others.  Unfortunately, most U.S. consumers, even organic consumers, have never heard of these socially and environmentally responsible clothing companies.

Given the importance of clothing and fashion in American culture and the economy, there are a number of rarely discussed, yet crucial issues we need to consider—health, environmental, and ethical—before we pull out our wallets to purchase yet another item of clothing or a textile product.


Synthetic fibers in clothing and textiles pollute the environment, the ocean, and ultimately the food chain. Clothes and textiles are made from both natural fibers, like cotton, hemp and wool, and synthetic fibers, like fleece, rayon or polyester. Synthetic fibers, often marketed as wrinkle-resistant, durable or easy-to-clean, are industrially produced, utilizing large amounts of energy and toxic chemicals. Polyester, for example, is made from petroleum, a non-renewable fossil fuel. Rayon, technically “semi-synthetic,” is derived from wood pulp and transformed into fiber through a high-water- and chemical-intensive process in notoriously polluting factories.

Once manufactured into fleece sweaters, bath towels or sheets, and brought home by consumers, synthetic fibers pollute the natural environment in the form of “micro-plastics.”

Whereas natural fibers, including cotton or wool, biodegrade over time, synthetic fibers do not. Scientists and marine biologists have begun sounding the alarm that clothing and other consumer products containing synthetic fibers (such as polyester, nylon, fleece and acrylics) release plastic-like micro-particles when washed, passing through sewage treatment plants, polluting surface waters and the oceans, where they are eaten and bio-accumulate in fish and other marine life, eventually contaminating the seafood that we eat.

 “Synthetic fibers are problematic because they do not biodegrade, and tend to bind with molecules of harmful chemical pollutants found in wastewater, such as pesticides or flame retardants.”

Read more: https://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/organic-bytes-542-are-your-gmo-clothes-making-you-sick

But perhaps the safest thing to do is to stop buying clothing and textiles containing synthetic fibers.