What's Actually In Your Clothes | Pesticides, Dyes & Fast Fashion

We wash our vegetables before we eat them. We check the ingredients on our food. We think carefully about what we put into our bodies. But we rarely stop to think about what we put onto them — and what, over years of daily skin contact, those things might be putting into us.

The fashion industry is one of the most chemically intensive manufacturing sectors in the world. By the time a garment reaches your wardrobe, it has passed through an average of 8,000 synthetic chemicals — from the field where the fibre was grown, to the dyeing vat, to the finishing treatment that makes it feel soft or stay wrinkle-free. Some of those chemicals wash out. Some don't. And the ones that don't are sitting against your skin for roughly sixteen hours a day.

This isn't about fear. It's about knowing what's actually happening — and making a more informed decision about what you wear as a result.

It starts in the field

Before a garment is dyed, cut, or sewn, the fibre itself carries a chemical history. Conventional cotton — the most widely used natural fibre in fashion — is one of the most pesticide-intensive crops on the planet. Although cotton covers only around 2.4% of the world's cultivated land, it accounts for roughly 6% of global pesticide use — more than any other crop.

Pesticides applied to cotton crops don't simply disappear. Residues persist in the harvested fibre and can carry through into the finished fabric. Workers in the fields where cotton is grown — many of them in countries with limited regulatory protection — face the most acute exposure: pesticide poisoning, in severe cases, can result in heart, lung, or kidney failure. But the residue question for wearers is a real one too, particularly for people with sensitive skin or for children whose skin absorbs more readily than adults.

The dye problem

Colour is where the chemistry gets significantly more concerning. The textile industry uses over 3,600 different dyes, and the most widely used category — azo dyes — are also among the most problematic.

Azo dyes are synthetic, nitrogen-based, and cheap to produce, which makes them the go-to choice across fast fashion manufacturing. The issue is what can happen under certain conditions — particularly heat, moisture, and contact with skin — when some azo dyes break down and release aromatic amines. Several aromatic amines are classified as carcinogenic. The EU has restricted the most harmful azo dyes in clothing sold within its borders, but many garments are produced in countries where those restrictions don't apply, and then imported finished.

Beyond azo dyes, the dyeing process itself introduces a broader suite of heavy metals — chromium, lead, copper, cadmium — used as mordants to fix colour to fabric. These metals don't bond perfectly to the fibre. Sweat and friction during wear can cause them to migrate, and once absorbed through the skin they can accumulate in organs over time, contributing to cognitive, kidney, and developmental damage at high enough concentrations.

Textile dye runoff entering rivers near garment manufacturing facilities. The fashion industry is the second largest polluter of clean water globally.

The finish on your clothes

Once a fabric is dyed, it typically receives a series of finishing treatments — chemical processes that give it the properties we've come to expect from modern clothing: wrinkle resistance, softness, stain repellency, anti-shrink. Each of these properties comes from a chemical source.

Formaldehyde is probably the most well-known. It's used as a resin finish on wrinkle-resistant, easy-care, and permanent-press fabrics — the chemicals are bonded into the fibre itself rather than sitting on the surface, which means they can continue releasing over time. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen, with sufficient evidence linking it to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukaemia. In clothing, the health concern is primarily contact dermatitis and skin sensitisation rather than cancer risk from clothing specifically — the concentrations are lower than in other exposure routes — but the fact that it continues releasing after washing, and that it's incorporated into the fibre rather than applied topically, makes it worth understanding.

That smell of a new garment — the chemical freshness that comes out of the packaging — is often formaldehyde. Washing new clothes before wearing them removes some of it. Not all.

Then there are PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used to create water-repellent and stain-resistant finishes. PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down in the environment or in the body. They accumulate. Research has linked PFAS exposure to immune system suppression, hormonal disruption, certain cancers, and developmental effects in children. And phthalates — plasticisers used in synthetic coatings, faux leather, and some dye processes — have been linked to ADHD, diabetes, breast cancer, and reproductive issues, posing a particular risk to children.

Who this actually affects most

The people most affected by toxic chemicals in fashion are not, in the first instance, the people wearing the clothes. They are the people making them.

Garment workers in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam are exposed to synthetic dyes, formaldehyde, and flame retardants across full working days, often with limited ventilation and minimal protective equipment. Agricultural workers in cotton-producing regions face the most severe pesticide exposure of all. The health consequences — respiratory disease, skin conditions, reproductive harm — are well documented and vastly underreported.

For wearers in regulated markets, the acute risk is lower. But "lower" and "absent" are not the same thing. The research on cumulative, long-term, low-level exposure to textile chemicals is still building — and the honest answer is that we don't yet fully know what decades of daily skin contact with azo dyes, formaldehyde resins, and PFAS finishes does to the human body over a lifetime.

Why organic cotton matters

The fashion industry's environmental footprint extends from the cotton field to the waterway. Organic cotton addresses the first and most controllable part of that chain.

Organic cotton removes the first and most preventable layer of this problem: the pesticide question. Grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, and using significantly less water than conventional cotton — up to 91% less, by some measures — organic cotton starts the garment's chemical journey from a cleaner point. There are no pesticide residues in the fibre from the field stage.

It doesn't solve everything. Organic cotton can still be finished with chemical treatments, dyed with synthetic dyes, and processed through chemically intensive manufacturing. Certification matters here: GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification covers not just the fibre's growing conditions but the entire supply chain through to the finished garment, including restrictions on harmful dyes and finishing chemicals. OEKO-TEX certification tests the finished product for over 100 harmful substances. These are the standards worth looking for — not just the word "organic" on a label, which can apply only to the fibre itself.

Every BoKa garment is made from 100% certified organic cotton, 180gsm, made to order. We choose organic cotton not because it's a marketing position but because we genuinely believe that what sits against your skin all day deserves the same level of scrutiny as what you put in your body — and that scrutiny starts with how the fibre was grown.