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From Clothes to Skin: Chemical Safety in Ultra-Fast Fashion and Luxury Brands’ Clothes

This literature review explores the presence and associated health risks of hazardous chemicals in clothing, with a particular focus on dermal exposure. It investigates the potential health effects of skin contact with toxic substances in garments and whether clothing sold from fast fashion brands and luxury brands contain different levels of chemicals. It emerged that chemicals such as aromatic amines, bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, and PFAS are commonly found in textiles and have been linked to serious health issues, particularly when skin is exposed to them (Rovira and Domingo, 2019). This review also compares two Greenpeace investigations, one on ultra-fast fashion brand SHEIN and the other on various luxury brands, highlighting that both types of garments can contain harmful substances (Brigden et al., 2014; Cobbing, Wohlgemuth and Panhuber, 2022). It suggests that the issue is widespread across the entire fashion industry. Therefore, stronger regulation, improved transparency, and further scientific research on chemical safety in textiles are needed.

Gender, Fashion, Sustainability

Author: Kate Fletcher Abstract The ability to affect sustainability outcomes is often culturally gendered. This article examines sustainability practices in fashion in the light of core themes in the gender and sustainability literature, drawing upon… Gender, Fashion, Sustainability

Posing in nature.

Pakket i plast 

“Wrapped in plastic” was a talk given during the Forskning i Friluftsliv conference by Kate Fletcher and Ingun Grimstad Klepp.