Is there formaldehyde on clothes?
The answer is yes
Even qualified clothes produced in compliance with standards will still contain formaldehyde, but it is limited to a certain range. . There will be more, not less, substandard clothes
“GB 18401 National Basic Safety Technical Specifications for Textile Products”
The requirements for formaldehyde content in clothing close to the skin and for infants are more stringent.
You can check it directly on your clothes tag
Textile chemical engineer’s professional answer: Why is there on clothes Formaldehyde?
How to remove formaldehyde from clothes as much as possible?
The most effective way is not to use activated carbon adsorption or plant (pothos) purification, or to use the messy formaldehyde removal products on the Internet.
But dry it in the sun, dry it, and soak it in water for many times.
Because formaldehyde exists in two forms on clothes, one is called bound formaldehyde and the other is called free formaldehyde.
Bound formaldehyde has almost no effect on humans, but free formaldehyde is really harmful to the body.
The relationship between them is like the sand used to build a house. When the sand is made into bricks and a building is built, the sand is already part of the building (combined with formaldehyde), but the sand that has not been made into bricks is It will float (free formaldehyde) on the construction site, turning into PM2.5 and turning into haze, endangering people’s health.
Formaldehyde is a substance that is easily soluble in water. Its aqueous solution is also called formalin and is used as a preservative. . Washing newly purchased clothes before wearing them can remove a lot of free formaldehyde.
What is the purpose of sun exposure or high-temperature drying?
It is because the bound formaldehyde does not remain unchanged, but will slowly bind to formaldehyde over time. It becomes free formaldehyde and is released again from the clothes. (Mainly the cross-linking reaction with the fiber and the finishing agent fixed on the fiber react reversibly under certain conditions, releasing formaldehyde to a limited extent until equilibrium.)
High temperature and sunlight will accelerate the transformation of bound formaldehyde into free The speed of formaldehyde is the same. Not only on clothes, the floor heating in northern homes in winter will also accelerate the release of formaldehyde in wooden floors.
I do not recommend that you buy products such as formaldehyde removers on the Internet at will.
Because most of the ingredients in them are formaldehyde capture agents, which are compound solutions that can chemically react with formaldehyde ( For example: aqueous solutions and mixtures of amides, phenolic hydrazines, organic amines, inorganic ammonium salts, etc.)
After the reaction of these substances, free formaldehyde in clothes and air is converted back into bound formaldehyde . Of course, this combination is unstable and will be slowly released later. And many of the substances are toxic in themselves. There is a mixed bag of products on the market. If you don’t understand them at all, I strongly don’t recommend buying them casually.
In fact, there is no way to remove formaldehyde from clothes. The only way is to identify the safety technology category of the clothes when you first buy them. Only by avoiding it at the source can the harm of formaldehyde be reduced to the greatest extent.
Formaldehyde has no smell (no smell), but it is highly irritating. If there is a pungent smell when a piece of clothing is bought and unpacked, it means that the formaldehyde is almost over the standard. What’s more, the requirements of national standards clearly point out that as long as the clothes have an odor, they are unqualified.
