Can Buying Secondhand Fashion Reduce Your Exposure to Toxic Chemicals?

If you’re purchasing in a thrift store, you can just sniff the clothing to be sure. But as fashion professional Amanda Lee McCarty told me during our conversation for her podcast, Clotheshorse, in the past she’s opened packages from Poshmark or Depop and been hit in the face with that uniquely strong smell of Gain. And that stuff is stubborn! It will stick to clothing over several washes in vinegar.

There’s also hard evidence that many hazardous chemicals stick around for the long term, especially performance finishes and dyes that have been deliberately applied. H&M and IKEA initiated a study of secondhand wool, polyester, and cotton textiles in 2019 and published the results in 2021. The clothing was collected from around the world, and it wasn’t old H&M or IKEA textiles — just random secondhand textiles. They didn’t test textile blends.

Half of the polyester samples failed (had restricted substances over commonly-accepted textile limits) including the endocrine disruptors NPEO and BPA, chlorinated benzenes, cadmium, and a type of phthalate. Wool was worse: 96% of the wool samples had a failure, mostly NPEOs again. The heavy metal chromium was also in 18% of the samples. Cotton was mostly clean. (The way H&M presented the data in its press release was somewhat confusing — I pulled this from the fully detailed presentation they sent afterward.)

So I would say that if you don’t want to break your budget by buying certified non-toxic baby and kid’s clothing, you can buy it secondhand. Just do the sniff test if you can. And if it reeks, send it back.

But more importantly, try to get natural fibers like cotton whenever possible. And avoid clothing with thick, puffy prints on them. Those plastic-y prints can be quite toxic as well! I was told so by an industry expert, and lo and behold, when I had a t-shirt with a plastic-y print tested, it failed for pentylphenol, a type of alkylphenol often used in paints and coatings that is persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic.

I hope that’s helpful to you in your quest to keep your kids healthy and safe. Hopefully, there are more updates to legislation protecting us in the future so you don’t have to worry about this. If you want to get involved, Toxic-Free Future and Safer States are two organizations working on this topic.