Adi brand children's clothing fabric printing and dyeing containing toxins

Adidas, Nike and other 12 brands contain toxic fear of damage to children's endocrine system

Recently, a report on the investigation of toxic residues in children has once again brought public concern back to the safety of children's clothing.

According to a report released by an environmental protection organization abroad, entitled "Traffic of Tongrun River - Survey of Residues Containing Toxic and Hazardous Substances in Global Brand Children", there is no difference between residual toxic and harmful substances in children's clothing and adult clothing. .

According to reports, the brands under investigation include 12 internationally renowned brands such as Burberry, Adidas, Nike, H&M, Primark, and Uniqlo.

“The most likely problem is fabric and printing and dyeing,” Xiao Danlai, deputy secretary-general of the Hubei Textile Industry Association, told reporters. A number of apparel industry sources also confirmed this to reporters.

In fact, the toxic substances such as nonylphenol polyoxyethylene ether (NPE) and Phthalates detected in this survey report are currently applied in national mandatory standards for textile products for infants and children. Not involved.

Multi-brand toxic detection value exceeds the limit

On January 14, an environmental protection organization from abroad released the report "Traffic of Tongliuhe River - Survey of Residues of Toxins and Hazardous Substances in Global Brand Children." The report showed that 12 famous brands of children’s clothing generally contained toxic and hazardous substances.

From May to June 2013, the above organizations purchased 82 samples of children's and infants' and children's clothing in 25 countries and regions around the world. All samples were purchased in stores of all brands and stores authorized by the brand. Brands tested included Burberry, Adidas, Nike, Puma, Li Ning, Disney, America Apparel, C&A, GAP, H&M, Primark, and Uniqlo. Samples originated from 12 different countries including China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Vietnam, and the United States.

The survey report shows that NPE is an important detection index with a detection limit of 1 mg/kg. Of the above samples, 61% of the samples were detected, and 12 brands participating in the test had at least one child's wear sample that was detected as NPE residue. Out of a total of 82 children's apparel samples, 50 samples were detected containing NPE in amounts ranging from 1.2 mg/kg to 17,000 mg/kg.

Among them, there are 3 samples with NPE residues exceeding 1000 mg/kg, including Disney's children's skirt (TX13040) (3900 mg/kg); C&A's children's shoes (TX13030) (17,000 mg/kg), and infants of American Apparel Clothing (TX13015) (2000 mg/kg). In addition, the Burberry T-shirt (TX13025) also detected 780 mg/kg of NPE residue.

It is understood that NPE is an artificial chemical that is widely used in textile production. When NPE is discharged into the environment, it will degrade to another more toxic environmental pollutant, nonylphenol (hereinafter referred to as NP). NP is an environmental hormone that is persistent and bioaccumulative and strongly toxic to aquatic organisms. It disturbs the animal's endocrine system, causing feminization in male animals and hormone imbalance in female animals.

Guan Yuanyuan, director of the Chinese Ministry of Media of the environmental protection organization that issued the investigation report, told reporters that there were three reports on the investigation of children's possession of toxic substances. The first two reports investigated the toxic substance residues in children's clothing products in Zhili, Huzhou, Zhejiang, and Shishi Fengli, Fujian, and the toxic substances emitted from printing and dyeing companies in Shishi Wubao. The “Trafficking of Boys Rivers – A Survey of Residues of Toxins and Poisons in Children of Global Brands” is the latest release.

The report calls for governments and companies to manage the entire life cycle of chemical substances from the source and formulate sound policies and regulations to completely eliminate toxic and hazardous substances from the source.

In an interview, an apparel industry expert expressed different opinions. “A lot of raw materials are difficult to be completely banned in the short term, and the cost of substitution is too high. It is more feasible to formulate relevant enforcement standards.”

Fabrics, dyeing and suspicion as the source of toxic substances

“The most likely problem is fabric and printing and dyeing,” Xiao Danlai, deputy secretary-general of the Hubei Textile Industry Association, told reporters.

Li Xiao, who has been engaged in the garment industry in Guangzhou for a long time, told the reporter that the general production of clothing is mainly the cutting and processing of fabrics and is unlikely to cause problems. If clothing detects toxic substances, the problem is in fabrics and printing. "More than 70% of the fabrics in Guangzhou are from Zhejiang."

A printing and dyeing industry person in Zhejiang revealed to reporters that NPE or NPEO is a commonly used surfactant and is widely used in detergents, textiles, pesticides, coatings, papermaking and other industries. This substance is not produced in the production of clothing, nor is it produced in the production of fabrics, but in the production of dyeing auxiliaries such chemical manufacturers. The production process of textile and garment involves many links, from cotton and other raw materials to yarn, fabrics, printing and dyeing, until processing to garments, more than a dozen links in the middle, each link may have pollution, due to the addition of a large number of chemical assistance Agent. Alternatives to such dyeing auxiliaries have already appeared, but some chemical companies are still using them to reduce costs.

"The use of chemical additives has different standards for different plants. Adidas, Nike and other large companies have their own quality control, we can only do high imitation products." Li Xiao said.

In fact, printing and dyeing companies will also bring serious environmental pollution.

According to the report of “Tongliuhe Pollution 2 — Printing and Dyeing Enterprises in Shishi Wupu Industrial Control Area” published by the environmental protection organization on January 7, the number of offshore waters in the Wubao Industrial Control Area in Shishi City, Fujian Province was counted. The pollution belt formed by black sewage covers an area of ​​approximately 62,500 square meters, which exceeds the total of 50 Olympic-standard swimming pools.

The wastewater of the 19 printing and dyeing companies in Shishi City Wubao Industrial Controlled Area was totally treated by the Haitian Wastewater Treatment Plant. The final wastewater was discharged into the South China Sea through a deep-sea sewage pipe of 2.4 kilometers. In the wastewater of these printing and dyeing companies, toxic substances such as environmental hormones such as nonylphenol, chloroaniline and hydrazine were detected.

In the face of pollution problems, major brand suppliers have begun to disclose information on the emissions of each chemical to the public. So far, 18 well-known brands including Adidas, Nike, and Li Ning have pledged to achieve zero emissions of toxic and hazardous substances by January 2020.

Including UNIQLO parent company Fast Retailing, Zara's parent company Inditex, H&M, Benetton Benetton, Valentino, G-Star, Marks & Spencer M&S, Victoria's secret parent companies LimitedBrands, C&A, Puma, Coop, Canepa and Esprit have begun The Public Environmental Research Center (IPE) website discloses information on its suppliers' toxic and hazardous substances. The number of factories currently open has reached 80.

The lack of domestic industry standards

At present, China still has not issued a list of specific dangerous chemicals that require industry to phase out. The relevant person of the National Quality Supervision and Inspection Center for Textiles and Apparel Products told reporters that many of the toxic substances mentioned in the report were not covered by the national mandatory enforcement standards. Compared with EU standards, a specific list of toxic and dangerous chemicals has not yet been developed in China.

"It is impossible to completely rely on corporate self-regulation to achieve zero emissions of toxic substances," said the printing and dyeing industry.

It is understood that China is the world's largest textile product manufacturing country, and consumes 42% of the world's textile chemicals each year, ranking first in the world. In this test, 35% of samples were produced in China (29), toxic and hazardous substances The detection rate is as high as 96.6%.

Greenpeace stated that the government has the responsibility to establish a sound chemical management system. Registration from the use of chemicals, publication and regular updating of a black list of toxic and hazardous substances, establishment of regulations based on the principle of prevention to limit or prohibit the use of hazardous substances, and the collection and disclosure of information on the discharge of pollutants; the government is responsible for managing The entire life cycle of chemicals can accelerate the replacement and elimination of toxic and hazardous substances.

China's implementation of hazardous chemicals management is not fast. In fact, until 2009, the Ministry of Environmental Protection established the Chemicals Management Office. In recent years, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has promulgated the Twelfth Five-Year Plan for the Control of Environmental Risks of Chemicals, and the first environmental regulations for toxic and hazardous substances—"Registration Measures for Environmental Management of Dangerous Chemicals," and its supporting documents, Key Environment Catalogue for the management of hazardous chemicals will be announced soon. This catalogue breaks down the situation in China where only chemicals such as flammable and explosive were regulated, and chemicals that have long-term hazards to the environment and human health were included in policy considerations, such as substances with endocrine disruption.

However, compared with the svhc in the EU's REACH regulation, China still lacks a clear mechanism for updating the chemical catalog and the ultimate goal of eliminating these toxic and hazardous substances.

At present, the current system of China's chemical environment management mainly includes the registration of import and export of toxic chemicals and registration of new chemical substances. However, there are lack of regulations in the aspects of environmental management, release and transfer control of hazardous chemicals, management of key environmental risk sources, and lack of measures to restrict the production and use of chemicals that are highly toxic, difficult to degrade, and highly hazardous to the environment.

In addition, in the existing regulations for children, although some of the existing regulations are based on the protection of children's health, stricter standards are set for related products, but they are still incomplete—for example, phthalates are prohibited from producing toys and Child care products have not been banned from producing children's clothes. In addition, these chemical residue limits set for the protection of children are not the lowest values ​​that technology can achieve.

It is understood that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is trying to separate out a standard system related to consumer safety. The Catalogue of Key Chemicals for Dangerous Chemicals Management is also being led by the State Administration of Work Safety. This is considered by the industry to be a key step for China to move toward the management of the chemical system environment and eventually eliminate dangerous chemicals.

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