Weeping welts. blistering rashes. red raw feet. Who thought fabrics could be so dangerous? The Council of Textiles and Fashion Industries Australia (TFIA) is urging federal authorities to get serious about the level of toxins in trade.
Australia is lagging behind much of the developed world when it comes to regulating the use of harmful chemicals in textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) products. Below is an edited extract from a report on ‘Product Safety and Chemical Use’ by TFIA industry liaison Paula Rogers.
The organisation made several recommendations to the government in its report and referenced photographic evidence of adverse reactions to consumer footwear and apparel products. The extract focuses on Rogers’ assessment of the issue.
Europe vs Australia
Europe has had product safety legislation regulating the use of harmful chemical substances in TCF products since the mid 1990s. REACH legislation (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) now requires brands selling into the EU market to manage over 300,000 harmful substances in their products. REACH goes beyond its harmful chemical substances list to set maximum limits for TCF products that come into contact with human skin.
From the extensive list of restricted substances, there are 29 “Substances of Very High Concern” (VHC), which the EU regulates more closely. Strict regulations ensure no clothing and footwear products containing these toxic chemicals come into contact with human skin, as they are potentially harmful to human health. Among the list of 29 banned substances, cancer-causing AZO dyes, formaldehyde and chlorinated phenols are considered most harmful of all.
Many governments outside of Europe such as Japan, South Korea and China are in the process of adopting this system, either in part or in full. Non-compliance with REACH legislation is considered a substantial barrier to trade.
The effect of the legislation has been to force companies to dig deeply into their supply chains and to work out effective processes to comply with the mandatory limits.
While product safety is currently a hot legislative topic in other countries, this is not the case in Australia. The basic structure of EU REACH is the same as Australia’s National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS), in that they provide a list of harmful chemical substances that apply to all sectors of the economy.
But this is where the similarity ends. NICNAS lists only around 50,000 chemical substances and limits its role to notification and assessment of the use of these chemicals. There are no legally prescribed limits on the use in textiles of any of these chemicals.
Non-compliance with the REACH legislation is increasingly acting as a barrier to Australian companies wanting to export to the EU, particularly small to medium enterprises. The longer the delay in having a similar legislative structure, the more Australia cuts itself off from TCF trading opportunities.
Last year we exported almost $17 million of apparel directly to Europe. According to Austrade, many businesses display confusion about the REACH legislative requirements, which means they could face serious penalties in the future.
Implications for consumers
The low standards have made Australia a dumping ground for textiles, clothing and footwear containing chemicals that are restricted from products destined for markets in the EU. The Australian consumer is largely ignorant of the potential toxicity to be found in textiles and clothing products.
Customers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable product, but this tends to place it outside the reach of the average Australian. When educated about toxicity in clothing – particularly childrenswear – price is less important.
According to Dale Carroll, manager of Consulting Services at the CSIRO, while retailers may test for the presence of chemicals, there is nothing to stop products that contain harmful levels of chemicals being released onto the Australian market – even though they cannot be shipped to many countries, including the EU and China.
Figures cited in Roy Green’s review of TCF industries in 2008 showed that the average FOB export price of a cotton knit shipped to Italy was approximately $US6, while the cotton knits shipped to Australia in the same category was around $2.50. This cost variation may be a result of the cost of compliance with EU regulation, variation in quality, and discounted substandard product being sold into the Australian market.
According to Carroll, without government support and legislation and a testing or verification program implemented it is very unlikely that anything will change in this area as we import more and more textile products on a cost basis.
More on NICNAS and ACCC
Established in 1990, NICNAS is a Commonwealth statutory notification and assessment scheme introduced to protect the health of the public, workers and the environment from the harmful effect of industrial chemicals. It does not monitor finished goods.
In April 2010, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) established a product safety website (www.productsafety.gov.au) outlining current legislation on TCF product for sale in Australia, which is limited to care, fibre and country of origin labelling, flammability legislation on children’s sleepwear, and voluntary guidelines around limits on formaldehyde.
Unfortunately, the ACCC has not accepted the case to conduct ongoing widespread tests for the most harmful chemicals in TCF product. All market tests reportedly carried out by the ACCC to date have stated that “No formaldehyde was detected in any of the garments submitted”.
This is at odds with international claims which state that the TCF industry cannot operate without the use of formaldehyde at some level.
In 2009, TFIA conducted a range of tests on children’s shoes sold in Australia which showed evidence of particularly high readings for formaldehyde. One pair of black school shoes, manufactured for girls and marked as a size 9, were tested from March 18 to March 20 in 2009, with results showing 190 mg/kg of formaldehyde.
Depending on the interpretation of the ACCC guidelines on formaldehyde, which puts the limits somewhere between 30 and 100 ppm, the shoes fail either by six times or almost double the recommended limits. Since the ACCC doesn’t define the age of an infant, it is difficult to determine what the recommended limit should be.
The demographic that reportedly has the highest blood toxicity readings are children under four, according to Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, Canadian authors of Slow Death by Rubber Duck – How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health, published in 2009. The authors performed a cross section of blood tests for toxicity in infants.
Asia Pacific focus
In order to remain competitive, the Korean Ministry of Environment is in the process of reforming its chemical substance management system in response to REACH and other international chemical substance regulation.
China is also overhauling its existing regime for the notification of new chemical substances to make it more like the EU’s REACH regime. The regime only applies to novel substances – i.e. those not already listed on China’s chemicals inventory – so it will not immediately have a direct effect on all companies in the sector.
It is due to come into force in October 2010 and has been dubbed China REACH. It appears from the current legislative draft that data to support product registration may be submitted only by Chinese-registered entities. If so, non-Chinese companies wishing to export innovative products to China, or to have them manufactured there, would have to rely on local agents or affiliates.
Moreover, it would be mandatory under the regime to use Chinese testing laboratories to generate certification of this data. This is unlikely to mark the end of China’s efforts to strengthen its chemical safety regime and regulatory trends in such an important market.
The industry response
The advisor
Andreas Schimkus, senior industry advisor, TFIA. Schimkus spent four years in Hong Kong supplying footwear to the EU market. “The most dangerous way for a toxin to enter the body is not through the digestive system, but through the skin. Our body is very good at breaking down complex chemicals and rendering them harmless, but we’ve never evolved to process toxins absorbed through the skin. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen and exposure to low levels of formaldehyde can irritate eyes, nose and throat and can cause allergies affecting the skin and lungs. We have strong regulation and monitoring of imported food but we are not even thinking about regulating the levels of chemicals being used in clothing processes such as fabric treatments, dyes and printing or in the creation of synthetic fibres derived from petroleum-based feed stocks. A regulation of formaldehyde is absolutely vital to ensure the protection of the Australian TCF consumer.”
The supplier
Andrew Mills, managing director, Charles Parsons.
“We advocate raising the standards in our industry, right across the board. One way to achieve this is through a REACH-like EU legislative structure which controls the most harmful substances to humans. Banned cancer-causing AZO dyes, formaldehyde and chlorinated phenols are the three substance groupings that are considered most harmful, where proven non-compliance with set limits carries the weight of legal prosecution.”
The brands
Australian swimwear company Seafolly uses tried and tested international certification systems like Oekotex 100 to comply with all restricted chemical substances for its local and global markets. In Australia, Oekotex 100 tends to be used by high profile brands such as Seafolly, or for growing niche markets that trade on their environmental credentials servicing the green consumer. Other Australian companies such as The Merino Company (TMC), Instyle and ABMT use accreditation schemes as part of their points of difference.
EU REACH: The Black List
The main grouping of the 29 most harmful chemical substances under the EU’s REACH are:
• pH value
• Formaldehyde
• Extractable heavy metals
• Pesticide
• Chlorinated phenols
• Chlorinated benzenes & toluenes
• Phthalates
• TBT/DBT
• Banned AZO dyes
• Allergy-causing dispersion dyes
• Colour-fastness
• Emissions of volatile organic compounds
• Odour and biocides
Flame-retardants are regulated separately. Formaldehyde, chlorinated phenols and banned AZO dyes have legally regulated parameters.