PFAS and Substance Disclosure in Textiles

Substance disclosure is the passport field most likely to be populated with something that is not evidence. Brands generally know which finishes they specify; they rarely know what is in those finishes, because the formulation belongs to a chemical supplier who regards it as proprietary.

PFAS make that general problem concrete, because they are widely used, increasingly restricted, and detectable by a regulator or an NGO with a laboratory budget.

What are PFAS and where are they in a garment?

In textiles they appear predominantly as a treatment rather than as part of the fibre. Durable water repellent finishes are the largest single use, applied at the mill after fabric formation, which means the substance enters the product through a process step that brand specifications frequently describe only by performance.

Every row has the same shape: the substance is introduced by a party the brand does not contract with directly, and the party that does hold the formulation treats it as a trade secret. That is the structural reason substance data is hard, and it is not solved by asking the tier-1 supplier more firmly.

What does REACH already require?

Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 obliges suppliers of articles containing a substance of very high concern above 0.1% by weight to communicate sufficient information down the chain, and to notify the SCIP database maintained by ECHA. Several PFAS are already on the candidate list.

This is a current obligation, not a future one. Businesses waiting for a PFAS-specific restriction before addressing substance data are already exposed under an instrument that has been in force for years — the mechanics are set out in SVHC and SCIP: the 0.1% threshold.

How is the 0.1% threshold actually calculated?

Against the mass of the article containing the substance. The Court of Justice settled this in the so-called once an article, always an article ruling, and the practical effect is to make the calculation considerably stricter than a whole-product basis would be.

For a textile product this is consequential. A treatment applied to a face fabric is assessed against that fabric, not against the assembled garment including its lining, hardware and packaging. Brands that computed against total product mass have generally under-reported.

What restrictions are coming?

A broad restriction proposal covering the PFAS family was submitted to ECHA by five national authorities and is under evaluation. Separately, individual PFAS continue to be added to the candidate list and to Annex XVII restrictions.

The regulatory direction is not seriously in doubt; the timing and the scope of derogations are. A business planning on the assumption that fluorinated finishes remain available indefinitely for general apparel is taking a position most of the market has already moved away from.

What are the alternatives, and what do they cost?

Non-fluorinated durable water repellents exist and are widely used. They perform adequately against water and poorly against oil, and they generally require more frequent reapplication by the user to maintain performance.

• Silicone-based finishes: good water repellency, no oil repellency, lower durability to washing.
• Hydrocarbon wax finishes: acceptable for casual apparel, unsuitable for technical use.
• Dendrimer chemistries: better durability, higher cost, still limited on oil.
• Mechanical solutions such as tighter weaves: no chemistry, significant design constraint.

The honest position is that no drop-in replacement matches fluorinated performance on oil repellency, and technical and workwear categories feel this most. Substituting in general apparel is straightforward; substituting in protective clothing is a genuine engineering problem rather than a procurement one.

Why the durability argument cuts both ways

A finish that lasts longer means a garment that performs longer, which is squarely aligned with the durability objectives the ESPR is expected to set. A persistent chemistry delivering that durability is also, by construction, persistent in the environment.

This tension is real and is not resolved by preferring whichever objective is currently louder. What a passport can do is record the trade-off honestly — the finish used, its expected service life, and the reapplication guidance — rather than allowing a product to claim durability while omitting how it is achieved.

How do you actually get substance data?

Not by asking a tier-1 garment maker what is in the finish, because they do not know. The realistic routes go around them.

1. Specify chemistry positively: nominate approved formulations rather than performance alone.
2. Contract directly with the chemical supplier for a declaration covering your products.
3. Use a restricted substances list with testing, which detects rather than discloses.
4. Require SCIP notification numbers from suppliers as evidence that notification occurred.

The first is the most effective and the least used, because it moves the brand from specifying outcomes to specifying inputs, which requires technical capability many brands have outsourced. The third is the most common and the weakest, since testing tells you what was in the sample you tested.

Why testing is not the same as disclosure

Most brands manage substances through a restricted substances list and periodic testing. That is a control, and it is worth having, but it answers a different question from the one the passport asks.

A test result describes the sample tested on the date it was tested. Disclosure describes what is in the product as designed and produced. The two diverge whenever a mill changes an auxiliary between runs, which happens for reasons of price and availability that are never communicated downstream.

The consequence is that a brand can hold a clean test certificate and an inaccurate passport entry simultaneously, without anyone acting in bad faith. Closing that gap means obtaining declarations tied to formulations rather than results tied to samples, which is a procurement change rather than a laboratory one.

What this costs to get wrong

The enforcement risk is not the largest exposure. Substance findings in consumer goods are routinely publicised by NGOs and consumer organisations with their own testing programmes, and the resulting coverage reaches customers far faster than a market surveillance process does.

A passport entry that turns out to be wrong is worse than no entry at all in that setting, because it converts a supply chain failure into a documented claim that was inaccurate. That is the argument for attributing each substance declaration to the party that made it rather than restating it in the brand’s own voice.

What goes in the passport?

At minimum, the presence of substances of concern above threshold, located to the component that contains them, with the SCIP notification reference where one exists. Located matters: a recycler needs to know which part of the garment carries the substance, not that the garment carries it somewhere.

The evidence behind each entry should carry its asserting party. A substance declaration signed by the chemical formulator is verifiable by a downstream reader; the same text typed into a brand’s product record by a merchandiser is not, and the difference becomes visible the first time it is challenged.