7 ms·

Wow I had no idea. Here's a link that talks about makers of outdoor gear and their relationship with DWR. http://www.detox-outdoor.org/ http://www.detox-outdoo

Wow I had no idea. Here's a link that talks about makers of outdoor gear and their relationship with DWR. http://www.detox-outdoor.org/ http://www.detox-outdoor.org/ It doesn't look like there is a lot of choice. Maybe I'll just stay wet :)

abandonliberty 7y ago
That site isn't loading for me. I would hope that vapor-permeable membranes work (e.g. gore-tex). The only problem is that the outside of the garment gets wet, and they're not very breathable
- smitty1110 7y ago
  Gore-tex is PTFE, also known as Teflon, which is a flurocarbon. Several of the waste products or reactants for making Teflon are in the same category as DWR products, and are basically toxic forever. There's not much you can do if you need fabrics with these properties, you just need to pick you poison.
  - thewebcount 7y ago
    But Teflon doesn't react with anything. That's its purpose. So even though it's a fluorocarbon, it's unlikely to cause health problem because it just won't react with your body. Or is there some other mechanism through which it causes damage, such as blocking something by physically being in the way?
    - mark-r 7y ago
      Consider what happens to your immune system when it detects a foreign particle that it can't get rid of because there's no way to interact with it.
      - XMPPwocky 7y ago
        What happens? I'm not an immunologist, and "common sense" certainly doesn't seem like the way to think about the behavior of something as complex as the human immune system.
        Supermancho 7y ago
        The human immune system doesn't need to "interact" with a physical particle. White cells envelope (standard attack) a foreign particle, then dies around them, and the resulting envelope is expelled. Your body is mostly fluid. Internal fluids don't really need complex chemical interactions but the dead white blood cell acts as an effective envelope for transport, by design. eg mucus in your nose when you're sick.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - nate_meurer 7y ago
        For the most part, what happens is nothing. PTFE is completely biologically inert, which is why it's commonly used in surgical implants and prosthetics. Only the finest particles (<100 nm) have been established to present a biological hazard, and these are very hard to come by. Ingested PTFE passes right through the digestive system unaltered. You can scrape the non-stick coating off of all your pans and eat it, and there will no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. However, if you heat that nonstick pan above 600 deg F, the decomposition products can easily injure you, and sometimes worse. But even in this case, and main danger does not appear to be microfine PTFE particles, but rather chemical nasties like fluoroacetates. There are many studies on this. One example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11042093 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11042093 - "Pulmonary effects induced by ultrafine PTFE particles"
        7y ago
    - bobthechef 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety
      - XMPPwocky 7y ago
        Those articles describe PTFE as "stable and non-toxic at lower temperatures", starting to degrade into concerning and toxic byproducts at 500F/260C. As a rule, I try not to let my rain jacket reach 260C, but your local weather may differ?
        reportingsjr 7y ago
        PTFE coated pans definitely reach above 500F from time to time. People who own birds are suggested to not use PTFE coated pans. Birds are much more sensitive to the offgased chemicals and there are numerous instances of people accidentally killing pet birds from these fumes, so it definitely happens.
        XMPPwocky 7y ago
        Yeah- there are definitely problems with it on pans, but the context of the thread was for PTFE as a water repellent in clothing. As far as I know, the concerns for uses where high heat isn't an issue are related to manufacturing byproducts- which can make their way into the final product, but also if the manufacturer doesn't dispose of them correctly, they can wind up in the environment. It's almost a bit like Agent Orange (though probably not nearly as bad, at least not in the medium-term?)- the intended product isn't the problem, but the manufacturing process makes it really easy to let nasty stuff slip in. But I don't know that much about this, so please correct me if I'm wrong! Not a chemist, I just read a lot.
  - hammock 7y ago
    Add for clarity: Goretex (like all modern waterproof-breathable products) is a system, which includes a PTFE membrane, as well as a DWR coating. The fabric is not breathable without the DWR coating, as it will "wet out."
    - germinalphrase 7y ago
      Breathability is as much a marketing feature as it is a useful property of these garments/fabrics. Do they work well in cold/dry conditions? Yes! Do they work well in warm humid conditions (i.e. your average North America. Rainy day)? Not so much.
      - hammock 7y ago
        How old are you? The key feature is not breathability but "waterproof+breathable." You might not be old enough to remember airtight rubber raingear, or questionably waterproof oilskin, or horribly "water resistant" synthetics. You also might not be into gear enough to have realized the significant spectrum of breathability between a nylon jacket, a 2.5 layer jacket, and a fully 3-ply goretex pro. It is a real thing, not marketing, for many who care about and rely on these things for comfort and safety.
        germinalphrase 7y ago
        I am aware. I’ve sold this gear, have owned a spectrum of different types, and use it regularly. Humidity differentials are real. I stand by what I said.
        hammock 7y ago
        Maybe one day they will make a rain jacket with an air compressor in it :)
  - DenisM 7y ago
    Sodium is a precursor to table salt and it’s highly toxic. Would you consider table salt dangerous?
bjornjajajaja 7y ago
Honestly people have “stayed wet“ for centuries without chemicals. We’ve hung our clothes to dry instead of using machines too. Lots of apparel products are highly overrated. And those water resistant coatings just come off anyway. I think the best thing to do is go on a hike near a river with a dog, and watch how the dog marches through the water unwaveringly even when it’s cold!
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  There's also waxed cotton and oilskin. Some maintenance required, but they work.
  - strainer 7y ago
    Unless you really saturate cotton in wax/oil so it has no breath-ability, it only holds up against showers. It becomes sodden and little use in persistent rain. PU coated polyester rainwear can perform on a different level in persistent rain. I've not found natural materials which perform as well, although some expensive tweeds are reportedly exceptionally good.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The whole breathable/gore-tex thing is overrated as they all rely on liberal use of DWR chemicals that tend to be waterproof only for a while. So regular retreatment, which never seems to be as good, or acceptance of wetness is needed. :) I'm surprised to see Patagonia in the worst of that site's categories, considering their stance on sustainability.
- strainer 7y ago
  Gore-tex (at least the heavy 'classic' kind) doesn't have any refreshable coating. Its an inner layer of moisture wicking mesh, stuck to a thin rubbery ptfe membrane of some sort and an outer very abrasion resistant layer which is hydrophobic when clean. It can be boil washed and special treatments are advised against. It is very waterproof while surprisingly breathable.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Hmm, as far as I can remember, every gore-tex item I've owned across the decades -- mainly from the better outdoorsy brands -- has needed a refresh, and warned to expect that on the label or leaflet. Some lasted longer than others. One that was left far too long without eventually gave about as much water protection as a cotton jacket. Whether any of them were "classic" gore-tex or not, I don't know. I've always understood it as the middle breathable layer with several bonded layers, and chemically waterproofed outer. Wikipedia seems to agree about the outer, and only notes a decline in breathability in newer fabric by using a PU layer in place of teflon bonded to fabric found on the earliest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - nate_meurer 7y ago
    No, Gore Tex -- and all other membrane systems -- rely on DWR to keep the face fabric from wetting out. The face fabric is only water repellent if it's finished with oil, wax, or DWR. When the finish is degraded, rain will wet out the shell and breathability plummets. There are no exceptions. If you invent a fabric that is both breathable and permanently water repellent (as in, it sheds water in beads), then I promise you'll become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams :)

abandonliberty 7y ago

That site isn't loading for me. I would hope that vapor-permeable membranes work (e.g. gore-tex). The only problem is that the outside of the garment gets wet, and they're not very breathable

smitty1110 7y ago
Gore-tex is PTFE, also known as Teflon, which is a flurocarbon. Several of the waste products or reactants for making Teflon are in the same category as DWR products, and are basically toxic forever. There's not much you can do if you need fabrics with these properties, you just need to pick you poison.
- thewebcount 7y ago
  But Teflon doesn't react with anything. That's its purpose. So even though it's a fluorocarbon, it's unlikely to cause health problem because it just won't react with your body. Or is there some other mechanism through which it causes damage, such as blocking something by physically being in the way?
  - mark-r 7y ago
    Consider what happens to your immune system when it detects a foreign particle that it can't get rid of because there's no way to interact with it.
    - XMPPwocky 7y ago
      What happens? I'm not an immunologist, and "common sense" certainly doesn't seem like the way to think about the behavior of something as complex as the human immune system.
      - Supermancho 7y ago
        The human immune system doesn't need to "interact" with a physical particle. White cells envelope (standard attack) a foreign particle, then dies around them, and the resulting envelope is expelled. Your body is mostly fluid. Internal fluids don't really need complex chemical interactions but the dead white blood cell acts as an effective envelope for transport, by design. eg mucus in your nose when you're sick.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - nate_meurer 7y ago
      For the most part, what happens is nothing. PTFE is completely biologically inert, which is why it's commonly used in surgical implants and prosthetics. Only the finest particles (<100 nm) have been established to present a biological hazard, and these are very hard to come by. Ingested PTFE passes right through the digestive system unaltered. You can scrape the non-stick coating off of all your pans and eat it, and there will no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. However, if you heat that nonstick pan above 600 deg F, the decomposition products can easily injure you, and sometimes worse. But even in this case, and main danger does not appear to be microfine PTFE particles, but rather chemical nasties like fluoroacetates. There are many studies on this. One example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11042093 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11042093 - "Pulmonary effects induced by ultrafine PTFE particles"
      - 7y ago
  - bobthechef 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety
    - XMPPwocky 7y ago
      Those articles describe PTFE as "stable and non-toxic at lower temperatures", starting to degrade into concerning and toxic byproducts at 500F/260C. As a rule, I try not to let my rain jacket reach 260C, but your local weather may differ?
      - reportingsjr 7y ago
        PTFE coated pans definitely reach above 500F from time to time. People who own birds are suggested to not use PTFE coated pans. Birds are much more sensitive to the offgased chemicals and there are numerous instances of people accidentally killing pet birds from these fumes, so it definitely happens.
        XMPPwocky 7y ago
        Yeah- there are definitely problems with it on pans, but the context of the thread was for PTFE as a water repellent in clothing. As far as I know, the concerns for uses where high heat isn't an issue are related to manufacturing byproducts- which can make their way into the final product, but also if the manufacturer doesn't dispose of them correctly, they can wind up in the environment. It's almost a bit like Agent Orange (though probably not nearly as bad, at least not in the medium-term?)- the intended product isn't the problem, but the manufacturing process makes it really easy to let nasty stuff slip in. But I don't know that much about this, so please correct me if I'm wrong! Not a chemist, I just read a lot.
- hammock 7y ago
  Add for clarity: Goretex (like all modern waterproof-breathable products) is a system, which includes a PTFE membrane, as well as a DWR coating. The fabric is not breathable without the DWR coating, as it will "wet out."
  - germinalphrase 7y ago
    Breathability is as much a marketing feature as it is a useful property of these garments/fabrics. Do they work well in cold/dry conditions? Yes! Do they work well in warm humid conditions (i.e. your average North America. Rainy day)? Not so much.
    - hammock 7y ago
      How old are you? The key feature is not breathability but "waterproof+breathable." You might not be old enough to remember airtight rubber raingear, or questionably waterproof oilskin, or horribly "water resistant" synthetics. You also might not be into gear enough to have realized the significant spectrum of breathability between a nylon jacket, a 2.5 layer jacket, and a fully 3-ply goretex pro. It is a real thing, not marketing, for many who care about and rely on these things for comfort and safety.
      - germinalphrase 7y ago
        I am aware. I’ve sold this gear, have owned a spectrum of different types, and use it regularly. Humidity differentials are real. I stand by what I said.
        hammock 7y ago
        Maybe one day they will make a rain jacket with an air compressor in it :)
- DenisM 7y ago
  Sodium is a precursor to table salt and it’s highly toxic. Would you consider table salt dangerous?

bjornjajajaja 7y ago

Honestly people have “stayed wet“ for centuries without chemicals. We’ve hung our clothes to dry instead of using machines too. Lots of apparel products are highly overrated. And those water resistant coatings just come off anyway. I think the best thing to do is go on a hike near a river with a dog, and watch how the dog marches through the water unwaveringly even when it’s cold!

i_am_proteus 7y ago
There's also waxed cotton and oilskin. Some maintenance required, but they work.
- strainer 7y ago
  Unless you really saturate cotton in wax/oil so it has no breath-ability, it only holds up against showers. It becomes sodden and little use in persistent rain. PU coated polyester rainwear can perform on a different level in persistent rain. I've not found natural materials which perform as well, although some expensive tweeds are reportedly exceptionally good.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

The whole breathable/gore-tex thing is overrated as they all rely on liberal use of DWR chemicals that tend to be waterproof only for a while. So regular retreatment, which never seems to be as good, or acceptance of wetness is needed. :) I'm surprised to see Patagonia in the worst of that site's categories, considering their stance on sustainability.

strainer 7y ago
Gore-tex (at least the heavy 'classic' kind) doesn't have any refreshable coating. Its an inner layer of moisture wicking mesh, stuck to a thin rubbery ptfe membrane of some sort and an outer very abrasion resistant layer which is hydrophobic when clean. It can be boil washed and special treatments are advised against. It is very waterproof while surprisingly breathable.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Hmm, as far as I can remember, every gore-tex item I've owned across the decades -- mainly from the better outdoorsy brands -- has needed a refresh, and warned to expect that on the label or leaflet. Some lasted longer than others. One that was left far too long without eventually gave about as much water protection as a cotton jacket. Whether any of them were "classic" gore-tex or not, I don't know. I've always understood it as the middle breathable layer with several bonded layers, and chemically waterproofed outer. Wikipedia seems to agree about the outer, and only notes a decline in breathability in newer fabric by using a PU layer in place of teflon bonded to fabric found on the earliest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- nate_meurer 7y ago
  No, Gore Tex -- and all other membrane systems -- rely on DWR to keep the face fabric from wetting out. The face fabric is only water repellent if it's finished with oil, wax, or DWR. When the finish is degraded, rain will wet out the shell and breathability plummets. There are no exceptions. If you invent a fabric that is both breathable and permanently water repellent (as in, it sheds water in beads), then I promise you'll become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams :)