Where to Find PFAS-Free Hiking and Outdoor Clothing and Gear

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Are you accidentally poisoning the water, soil, animals, and even your friends every time you take a hiking or ski trip? Since the 1940s, a broad class of synthetic chemicals called per- and poly-fluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAS, for short) has been added to performance gear such as raincoats, snow boots, bicycle oil, ski wax, and more to make them breathable yet impervious to water. This coating is called DWR by the industry, short for durable water repellent. It makes products stain-resistant and causes water to bead up and roll right off your jacket.

PFAS have been completely overused. KEEN, for example, discovered some years back that toxic PFAS finishes were being used on every little part of its footwear, even for sandals, where it wasn’t necessary at all.

These chemicals get into the ecosystem wherever you are having your adventure, as well as the water system when you wash your clothes, and especially in the communities where our clothing is manufactured. In fact, the shoe brand Wolverine was ordered to pay a $113 million fine in 2020 for contaminating waterways in western Michigan. Since then, there’s been a slew of litigation — everything from class actions over PFAS-containing products to multi-billion dollar settlements against chemical manufacturers.

The problem is, these chemicals don’t ever break down or go away. Once created, they flake off our clothes into our home, wash off our laundry and flow into our water systems, shed into formerly pristine wilderness snow, accumulate in wildlife and in our own bodies, and travel to the farthest reaches of the planet. They’ve been found in the blood of the remotest First Nation communities in Canada, and soaked into the snow of Mount Everest and ski resorts, due to their heavy use in high-performance outdoor clothing and gear.

You have some in your blood right now.

It’s not just an environment problem. PFAS can shed off of outdoor gear and into your home’s dust, which you can breathe in, or migrate from your clothing to your skin. (More research is need to find out how much PFAS can be absorbed into the skin.) According to a 2022 study in Environmental Science & Technology, on average, children wearing stain-resistant school uniforms treated with PFAS would be exposed to 1.03 parts per billion of PFAS per kilogram of their body weight per day through their skin.

This has scary implications for our planet and its animals, including us. Research has linked PFAS to a variety of cancers, reproductive disease, miscarriage, infertility, hormonal disruption, and weight fluctuations, to name just a few things.

That’s why it’s so incredibly important that all outdoor brands go PFC-free, to protect all of us.

(If this post is helpful to you, then check out: To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick — And How We Can Fight Back, by EcoCult founder Alden Wicker.)

How to Find PFAS-Free Outdoor Gear

Now, this can get pretty confusing, so let me translate some of the industry jargon for you.

Some brands still use the term PFC to indicate the broad class of forever chemicals used for most DWR finishes, but most brands, government officials, and advocates now refer to the class of chemicals as PFAS.

So if a brand says its products are PFAS-free, PFC-free, or free of fluorinated chemicals, then they are clean.

If a brand says it is PFOA-, PFOS-, long-chain- or C8-free, or says it uses short-chain finishes, then the brand still uses a certain type of PFAS that has similar health concerns, albeit somewhat less studied. The EPA says there are around 12,000 known types of PFAS and growing.

“Unless they say it’s PFAS-free, it may mean that they’re using some of what are called short-chain PFAS or the substitutes,” says Dr. Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist, researcher, and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). “In fact, we’re finding some of them are actually transformed into things like PFOA and PFOS. And we’re finding that the ones even that are stable the way they are, when they’re tested are causing the same kind of health effects as the PFOA, the PFOS, the PFHxS, etc.”

The apparel chemical organizations ZDHC, bluesign, and Oeko-tex all allowed short-chain substitutes up until 2023, when they announced that no PFAS of any sort would be allowed in textiles or factories that want to use their labels.

These labels are voluntary, however. Fashion brands can still use short-chain PFAS to finish performance gear. In California and New York, which both passed laws banning PFAS in apparel, outdoor brands have until 2028 to get PFAS out of their products. REI waited until early 2023, after being pressured for months, to announce it would ban PFAS in its apparel and cooking gear.

Some brands and advocates dispute that fluorinated chemicals are needed to create even professional-grade products. The Danish consumer protection association Tænk tested fluorine-free outdoor wear versus items that contained fluorine, and concluded, ”Whether new or after a few washing cycles, the jackets with a PFC-free coating keep you just as dry as the other ones.” Fluorine-free performance gear has recently been worn to the arctic, where it kept the adventurers warm and dry.

In short, there are so many brands that are PFAS-free at this point that I don’t think you need to resort to buying products with short-chain fluorinated chemistry, even if Mount Everest is on your bucket list, but especially if you’re just trying to go on an overnight hike in the mountains this summer.

How to Safely Add Water and Stain Repellency to Your Outdoor Gear

The problem, it seems, with PFC-free outdoor gear is that finishes without fluorinated chemicals don’t last as many wears or washes. But that’s an easy fix! If your old jacket or gear is no longer water-repellent, you can use PFAS-free Nikwax to wash it. That’s what some of these outdoor brands, like Páramo, use to waterproof their gear right out of the factory, along with using innovative “directional” fabric that coaxes the water off the fabric, sort of like roof tiles. You can easily reapply the finish at the end of each season when you wash and put away your gear. Learn more about how to do that from this instructional video. You can also use Detrapel’s PFAS-free spray made especially for performance gear.

And, you can buy secondhand outdoor gear that has shed much of its DWR and refinish it with a safer alternative.

So, which brands are offering fluorine-free outdoor clothing and gear? We’ve created a comprehensive and detailed list of brands you can trust. (A huge thank you to Green Science Policy Institute for their PFAS-free product list, which served as a jumping-off point for our research.)

Brands Where All Products Are PFC-Free

Icebreaker – Has never used long-chain PFAS. Stopped using any short-chain PFAS as well in 2019, and verifies through testing.

prAna – Has completely changed to PFAS-free DWR treatments starting with the Spring 22 collection. Check product year before purchase.

KEEN Footwear – Entirely PFC-free since 2020.

Houdini – Entirely toxic-free, using Atmos, a PFC-free membrane and biobased water repellency treatment from Organotex.

Páramo – Entirely PFC-free since 2014.

Didriksons – All products are free of fluorinated chemicals as of 2015.

Vaude – Entirely PFC-free apparel as of 2018.

Lundhags – Entirely fluorinated chemical-free.

Picture Organic – Entirely PFC-free thanks to a bio-based and non-fluorinated finish from Teflon called EcoElite.

Royal Robbins – All durable water repellents are fluorine-free.

Ortovox – All products have been produced entirely PCF-free from 2023.

OrNot – This California brand offers clothing designed for cyclists and is PFAS-free.

Deuter – All products are PFC-free thanks to a bio-based coating.

Nikwax – All waterproofing products are PFC-free.

Brands Where Some Products Are PFC-Free

When I first wrote this article in June 2021, this list of brands that were phasing out PFAS was four times as long. Alas, when I checked in, many brands had made little progress. I found dead links, PFAS-free product lines that were completely sold out, and the exact same language as a year ago, indicating that these brands aren’t making any discernible progress. I also deleted brands where you can’t easily search for products that are PFAS-free. That leaves just a few brands where I would recommend you look if you can’t find what you need from the above completely PFAS-free brands.

Fjällräven – Free of fluorinated chemicals except for its zips.

Patagonia – Has eliminated PFAS from its “noncritical” products (i.e. non-professional level), which makes up 90% of its gear. Hopes to have it out of its professional apparel by the end of 2024.

On — states that 90% of its waterproof footwear and apparel styles have been PFAS-free since 2022. Customers can filter for PFC free items while shopping online.

If this post was helpful to you, then check out: To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick — And How We Can Fight Back, by EcoCult founder Alden Wicker.