PFAS pollution—where PFAS enter the environment— occurs across an apparel product’s entire life cycle, from the facilities that manufacture the chemicals to the factories that apply PFAS onto apparel to the stores that sell PFAS-treated apparel to its use by consumers to its disposal in landfills or incinerators.10 The apparel industry, one of the top users of PFAS chemicals, is increasingly recog. [...] It complements other scorecards such as the Mind the Store Retailer Report Card, which looks at retailers’ progress in reducing the use of toxins, and the efforts of numerous organizations in the United States and around the world to stop the accumulation of PFAS in our bodies and environment.11 This scorecard is also an urgent call to action for the apparel industry and apparel consumers. [...] While many apparel companies banned the use of PFOA and PFOS in their supply chains in compliance with voluntary phaseout agreements or public pressure, most apparel brands and retailers have not banned the use of the thousands of other chemicals in the PFAS class. [...] The continued use of PFAS in products sold by Columbia Sportswear—one of the largest outdoor apparel brands in the United States—is an example of this glaring problem.51 According to its publicly released documents, Columbia Sportswear has not established a public timeline to phase PFAS out of all its products.52 The company also does not label all products that are coated in PFAS or use PFAS memb. [...] Scientific experts continue to raise the alarm about the health and environmental threats from the use of PFAS chemicals, and the more each chemical is studied, the more health risks are identified.60 The ubiquity of these chemicals across the globe points to the urgency of banning their use in consumer apparel, where they are not essential for health and safety or the functioning of society.
- Pages
- 51
- Published in
- United States of America
