In The Face Of Nike ADI And Other Famous Sports Brand, The Tibetan Drug Gate Said Helplessness.

Although the toxic and harmful substances that are remaining on the clothes can be washed away by washing, these toxic substances will exist for a long time and can again harm the health of the human body through the food chain.

"International Herald reporter" reporter Kim min intern Han Yi from Beijing recently, world-renowned sports brand has aroused a "drug related storm", Lining, Nike, Adidas and so on have not escaped the questioning of public opinion.

The storm comes from a report. In August 23rd, the Greenpeace released by the international environmental protection organization reported that many multinational and local brand products including Nike, Adidas, Lining, CONVERSE, H&M, UNIQLO, Kappa and so on contained "environmental hormone" nonylphenol polyoxyethylene ether (NPE).

These hormones may lead to precocious puberty and to a certain extent inhibit the development of male signs.

Although it is a little shocking, it is definitely not a case: in early August, experts in the "children's clothing safety action" launched in Beijing revealed that the average pass rate of children's clothing in Guangdong province was only about 6 percent in 5 years, and even many samples were taken for carcinogenic substances such as azo.

Toxins come from the printing and dyeing process.

The production of a garment usually includes yarn, weaving, wet processing, etc.

According to the Swedish chemical administration, more than 10000 substances are used in printing and dyeing process, of which about 3000 are commonly used.

In absolute terms, because the amount of chemicals used is very large, there are also a lot of toxic and harmful substances in the process of textile production.

The fine remnants of these harmful substances will remain in newly produced garments and

For example, in the unqualified children's clothing that has been detected many times in China, the "azo" exceeding the standard is the most prominent problem.

Azo is directly derived from azo dyes. These dyes can decompose more than 20 carcinogenic aromatic amines, which alter the DNA structure of human body through activation and induce cancer and induce cancer.

Xie Qing, Deputy Secretary General of the China clothing association, explained that children's clothing

"The safety problem of children's clothing sometimes appears not in the production enterprise, but in the printing and dyeing enterprise, which is undoubtedly a major bottleneck in the quality control of children's clothing."

Xie Qing told the International Herald guide.

Due to the low profits of garment industry, many factories have lowered their standards when purchasing fabrics without affecting the appearance quality. Low cost fabrics inevitably result in low quality products.

Wu Fangfang, the president of green box children's wear, once said: "the profit rate of the children's wear industry is only 5% to 8%, and the price of the factory's fabric purchase is lower."

Wearing clothes can also affect development.

If azo dyes and hazards are widely known, such chemicals like NPE are just emerging. Not only consumers know little about this, but there are also gaps in policy.

Unlike azo, the harm of NPE is due to its decomposition products.

Chang Huaichun, Professor of chemistry at Liaoning University, said that NPE is a polymer and is not a dangerous product in itself, but NPE will react to generate NP (Ren Jifen) under certain conditions in the natural environment.

It is an endocrine disruptor and carcinogen. It is called environmental hormone. It is toxic to the reproductive system. It can affect the sexual development of human beings. NP can also accumulate in the organism through the food chain.

"In the most popular terms, there is a positive correlation between NPE intake and precocious puberty. At the same time, experiments have shown that this environmental hormone can lead to feminization of male fish.

In the experiment of white rats, scientists found that the male testicles produced by long term intake of NPE were much smaller than normal.

Green Peace Project Director Zhang Kai said.

"In fact, not only NP, but also familiar chemicals such as bisphenol A, o-benzoic acid two, all belong to environmental hormones, also known as endocrine disruptors, which are similar in mechanism to human health."

Shi Jianghong, associate professor of environmental science, Beijing Normal University, who has studied environmental hormone for more than ten years, said in an interview with the International Herald guide.

Popularly speaking, these environmental hormones can exert influence on normal hormone function in human body and animals, thus affecting endocrine system, reproductive function system and so on.

There are about seventy chemicals listed in the world as "environmental hormones".

More than forty of them are pesticides, of which 666, DDT and endosulfan are currently banned.

In addition, plastic plasticizers, industrial chemicals, hormone drugs also exist in a large number of "environmental hormones."

There are also many environmental hormones in clothing industry.

NPE exists widely in the production process of textiles, and the whole industry lacks technical means to completely eliminate the existence of NPE immediately, resulting in many garments containing NPE residues.

Even a well-known clothing brand can not avoid the links such as fabric, accessories, printing and dyeing from upstream.

The Greenpeace report says 78 samples of 15 clothing brands have been purchased in 18 countries, including China, the United Kingdom and Argentina, including sportswear, casual wear and footwear.

The origin of these samples relates to 13 textile producing countries such as China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Greenpeace said the samples were sent to a qualified third party Laboratory for testing. The results showed that samples of 2/3, including Adidas, were detected to contain NPE.

Consumers are helpless.

For these well-known brands of environmental hormone storm, recently, the reporter visited some large stores, the names of Nike, Adidas, Lining and other brand counter sales personnel said they did not know the so-called "NPE" or "environmental hormone", they also did not get any notice on the upper level.

According to local media reports, sales of these clothing brands have not been affected.

A citizen's reaction may reflect the frustration of consumers: "if this is a common problem, there is no help in worrying. The market has been occupied by these brands. If we buy some products with unknown brands, it will be even more uneasy."

After getting involved in the vortex of toxic substances, companies affected were issuing statements. Among them, Adidas said: "our NPE concentration is far below the target value, which proves that our policy is effective.

Most of the Adidas products tested did not detect NPE (5 of the 9 samples tested did not contain NPE).

Adidas has been sticking to the NPE concentration of 100ppm. "

The Li Ning Co stated that China has not yet asked for NPE indicators. The EU REACH standard stipulates that the NPE contained in each kilogram should not exceed 1000 milligrams. The NPE content of 4 Lining products being sampled is 680 mg / kg, 9.8 mg / kg, 7.1 mg / kg, 2.8 mg / kg respectively, all in line with the EU REACH standard.

Responding to the response of several Brand Company, Zhang Kai told the International Herald guide that the EU regulations prohibit the use of chemical preparations higher than 0.1% (1 thousand mg / kg), and this amount is intended to prevent contamination of chemical preparations. It is not allowed to add itself. "These companies actually misread the standard and mistakenly considered the standard of chemical reagent as the standard of the final product. The difference between them is that the reagent used for the product is one, the final product is finished, and the EU stipulates the use of the process rather than the end product."

Zhang Kai said.

In 2005, the European Union promulgated the "REACH code" to prohibit its use in textile production.

At the beginning of this year, the Chinese government added NPE and NP to the catalogue of toxic chemicals that China strictly restricts import and export. However, there is no corresponding provision for its use and discharge in China.

Prior to this, Greenpeace discovered in 2010 that the wild fish in the Yangtze River Basin were enriched with environmental hormones including NP, which is considered to be the result of NPE's extensive application in the textile industry.

"Although the toxic and harmful substances can be washed away by washing, the toxic and harmful substances will exist for a long time after entering the environment, and they can endanger human health once again through the food chain."

Zhang Kai said.

Elimination of source is the solution.

Due to the lack of relevant domestic laws and regulations, there are two sets of standards for export enterprises and domestic enterprises.

Taking environmental hormone, o-benzoic acid two as an example, since the European Union standard was promulgated, the plasticizer containing o-benzoic acid two formate was no longer used in toys exported to the European Union.

However, domestic products are not used in toys like the European Union. For cost reasons, the domestic toys still use a large amount of o-benzoic acid two.

Warnings from the national quality inspection department are usually issued to export products.

On NPE, there are differences between export and domestic clothing because of other regulations.

"Now our country's clothing inspection is internal and external."

Xie Qing said, at present, clothing enterprises export and domestic sales are two lines of inspection, to foreign countries is customs inspection, and domestic industry and commerce administration department detection.

Of course, the standards of implementation are also different. Exports are in accordance with EU standards, while domestic sales are in accordance with domestic standards.

In fact, there are substitutes for o-benzoic acid two and NPE, but the price varies greatly.

For example, the plasticizer containing o-benzene, its price per ton is about 14000 yuan, and the price of the plasticizer excluding o-benzene is up to twenty thousand yuan per ton, while the use of NPE in washing and dyeing processes by textile enterprises will also greatly reduce the cost.

The clothing related drug crisis has already led some big brands to spontaneously promote the "purification" of the industrial chain.

Zhang Xiaoyan, director of the Li Ning Co and director of external public relations affairs, said at the August 26th media conference that the company decided to include NP and NPE in the chemical control list, and then push suppliers to strictly abide by this requirement in all links.

This means that the two level suppliers of Li Ning Co will be required to issue third party certificates when supplying the first level suppliers, indicating that the content of NP and NPE in products (such as dyes) is up to EU standards.

However, such a brand enterprise like Lining has an exemplary role, but it is difficult to replace the regulatory role, nor can the whole industry enterprises be so conscious.

In terms of chemical composition of clothing, supervision and execution has always been a difficult problem.

For example, China's national basic safety technical specification for textile products has already provided for the prohibition of the use of decomposable aromatic amine dyes, but children's clothing has repeatedly detected azobenzene.

Zhang Kai believes that only the elimination of the source can fundamentally solve this problem.