The most impactful assignment I’ve done was a a commodity chain: the study of a particular objects movement through the market. We chose an object we owned and traced its life from raw material to consumer. I wrote my paper on a Revlon lipstick; I chose the first 7 ingredients (because doing all 20+ was too much), looked up what they were, which countries exported those products (like lanolin, an oil from sheep’s glands, of which Australia is a primary exporter), where the product was manufactured (largely Indonesia), the labor conditions in factories (bad), and how those products were marketed to American consumers.

This assignment changed my life. It was the first time I became aware that the things all around us have to come into being, that that process takes an incredible amount of time, resources, and labor, and that these are rarely reflected in the cost of the thing we hold. The objects we encounter everyday are whole worlds in themselves, made up of more components than we can wrap our minds around.

But this assignment was only possible because we have laws and regulations requiring the disclosure of materials and ingredients by the FDA (Food and Drug Agency) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Before the early 20th century, these regulating agencies did not exist. It was a Wild West of clothing and food products and advertisers could say basically whatever they wanted about what was in their products and what effects they had. (Hence, “snake oil remedies,” magical cure-alls that said they could fix anything.)1

Enter the FTC

The FTC was established in September of 1914 under Woodrow Wilson.2

The FTC requires labels that include:3

1. Fiber content

2. Country of origin

3. Identity of manufacturer or business involved in producing the item

4. Labels for fur products

5. Care labels for clothing

These regulations are from The Textile Fiber Products Identification Act (Textile Act), 15 U.S.C. § 70, et seq., and the Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939 (Wool Act), 15 U.S.C. § 68, et seq..

This is what’s covered under these requirements:

• Clothing, except for hats and shoes

• Bedding, including sheets, covers, blankets, comforters, pillows, pillowcases, quilts, bedspreads and pads (but not outer coverings for mattresses or box springs); sleeping bags, hammocks

• Curtains and casements, draperies

• Towels, washcloths and dishcloths; tablecloths, napkins and doilies

• Floor coverings: rugs, carpets and mats

• Ironing board covers and pads; umbrellas and parasols

• Flags with heading or that are bigger than 216 square inches

• All fibers, yarns and fabrics, but not packaging ribbons

• Furniture slip covers and other furniture covers, cushions; Afghans and throws

So we’re all good right? We’re covered, now that we have regulation. Not quite.

None of this is covered:

Stuff you interact with at home:

• Upholstery or mattress stuffing that is not reused, outer coverings of upholstered furniture, mattresses and box springs

• Backings of carpets or rugs and pads or cushions for use under carpets, rugs or other floor coverings⁸

• Chair seats for lawn chairs, awnings

• Filters — all types

• Hangers padded with fabric

• Holiday decorations and ornaments

• Hot pads

• Covers for household items other than furniture and ironing boards: birdcages, irons, toasters, mixers, toilet tanks & lids, tissue boxes

• Wall coverings and wall decorations; window shades and shade pulls

• Textiles used in handbags or luggage¹⁰, brushes, lampshades, toys, feminine hygiene products, adhesive tapes and adhesive sheets, cleaning cloths impregnated with chemicals, or diapers

• Auto seat cushions

• Covers for sports equipment, such as golf clubs, skis, etc.

Stuff you wear:

• Shoes, overshoes, boots, slippers and all outer footwear

• Headwear, including hats, caps or anything worn exclusively on the head; wigs

• Linings, interlinings, filling or padding used for structural purposes; stiffenings, trimmings, facings or interfacings

• Knapsacks and backpacks

• Leather goods and trim

• Life preservers and jackets

• Burial shrouds

• Cosmetic masks and travel kits; sleeping masks

• Baby equipment — seats, carriers, carriages, strollers, harnesses, etc.

• Bags — net bags, tote bags, bags for laundry, diapers, cosmetics, sports gear, etc.

• Oven mitts

• Dog coats, other pet clothing, and pet furniture

• Saddle blankets, camel saddles; sports protectors for elbow, knee, chest, etc.

• Sweatbands

But also that’s just stuff covered under Wool and Textiles Acts, the other stuff we interact with regularly doesn’t require disclosure at all. The laptop I’m writing this on, that I come into daily contact with, is made of dozens of materials that I’m not sure of, and which Apple is not required to disclose.

Hidden on the Surface

While the FTC requires all textiles to be tagged with their fiber content, the composition of our clothes isn’t limited to the fibers in them. Have you ever wondered how clothes advertised as being resistant to stains, resistant to wrinkles, and all manner of other performance traits get to be that way? Like why is one cotton button-down wrinkle resistant but another is not? I honestly never thought about this before.

All of that is due to chemical finishes that go on our clothes. Our clothes contain dyes, chemicals, and surface treatments used from treating the raw material to prepare for dyeing all the way to adding surface finishes that make your clothes feel soft in the store.

Unless you live in California, where Proposition 65 requires warning labels for products that contain chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive issues,4 there really isn’t any regulation on disclosing the chemicals that are on our clothes. And those warning labels don’t actually tell you what’s on them either. You need to go to the online resource list to see what these chemicals are (if you can even understand what they mean! The names are certainly beyond my comprehension).

Often, the brands that sell the clothes don’t even know what chemicals are on them. Those chemical finishes are proprietary blends that chemical companies aren’t required to disclose and don’t want to, so their formulas aren’t copied.5

I’ve been learning so much about dyes and chemical treatments from this amazing book by Alden Wicker:

There’s also a documentary version.

Wicker interviews people who have developed life-changing sensitivities and chronic illnesses from chemical exposure to clothes, goes to different factories, and gets batches of clothes from popular and accessible brands independently tested to see what chemicals are present on them.

The clothes we wear contain all sorts of chemicals from formaldehyde to PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances, aka as “forever chemicals” that stay in your body forever) to arsenic, lead, and phthalates. Skin is the largest organ of our body and a porous membrane, so we’re absorbing many of the chemicals on our clothes into our bodies through our skin. Worse, the particles that shed off our clothes go into the air, so we breathe them in. The chemical exposure leads to all sorts of issues, like eczema, cancer, fertility issues, respiratory illness, and much much more.

It’s honestly pretty terrifying stuff. I’m still coming to grips with it all and how it will guide changes I might make in my own life, for what kinds of things I buy and how I interact with my clothes and other products around me. But most importantly, it makes me really angry that there is so much illness that is directly caused by the demand for profit and an indifference to human suffering.

There are so many people I know (and people I don’t know) who have shared stories of experiencing debilitating symptoms that they cannot find the answers for. We live in a constant field of unknown substances causing us unknown illnesses and the information that could help us is hidden from us. That needs to change.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are places that do have better regulations than us (the EU for example is much more stringent on chemical testing). But these problems can’t be solved by regulation alone. There are thousands of chemical compounds used in our clothes and when one is regulated, more rise to take its place, like a hydra. The capitalist structure that prioritizes profit over human life will continue to cause these problems over and over, as it endlessly produces clothing not as treasured items or material culture but as mass-produced products that pollute our groundwater, our soil, and our bodies.

We deserve to know what touches our skin, what we put into our bodies to give us energy, the blankets we swaddle our children in. We deserve to know what’s on the couches we invite our friends to relax on and the tablecloths we drape over our tables to eat with our families. We don’t have to accept this.