#381 | The Chemicals You're Wearing Every Day with The Clean Clothing Chick, Hannah Dunning

My name is Hannah Dunning, and I am an advocate for getting chemicals out of our clothes. So, I am a full-time consultant. I work with companies on getting harmful chemicals out of their stuff. I also help them communicate that to consumers, because it can be costly, it can be hard to do so. But now it does make business sense to do the right thing when it comes to fashion.

I also advocate heavily for more reform in some areas, but mostly for some kind of guardrails in our government, in terms of protections in our clothes. And I also have a business, and I'm about to launch the world's first completely plastic-free bra, so we'll be sort of like a clean Victoria's Secret, and that launches this fall.

So, got a lot going on, but what you need to know about me is I am dead set on getting really harmful stuff out of clothes.

How did you get into this, Hannah? Tell us a little bit of the backstory of how you discovered that clothes are toxic. And obviously, you're talking to a community of pregnant, postpartum, planning-to-get-pregnant mothers, babies, infants. So, this is a really important topic for us, and a topic that we've talked a lot about, low-tox living, on the podcast, but we're usually talking about, like, getting the air fresheners out of the house and getting rid of the perfumes.

We have never talked specifically about clothing, and that's something we wear every single day. And I didn't really know that it was as dangerous as it sounds like it might be.

Pregnant women, especially, are near and dear to my heart. That's how this entire journey started for me. And so I have two sort of soft spots for two different people groups: one are those who are immunocompromised or have cancer, as part of my story, and then the other group is moms.

So rewind all the way back to when I was a teenager. My grandmother helped raise me. My mom was a single mom until I was 10, and my grandma and I were best friends. My mom worked her butt off, she was, you know, a teacher and worked long hours and put herself through school, got her master's degree. My mom's awesome. Can I cuss on this podcast? She's a badass. Okay, cool.

And so my grandma and I got really, really close. Unfortunately, she got really, really sick. So she came down with estrogen-positive breast cancer, and she won her first round of cancer. She lost her second round when I was 16 years old, and when she was dying, I promised myself that I would do something to answer this disease.

Didn't know what that would be, didn't know what it would look like. Just knew for a fact that I would be dedicating my life to making sure that in some way, shape, or form I was keeping somebody from having to go through that, or somebody from having to watch someone that they love go through that.

So those are my marching orders that always was with me throughout school, throughout my early career. Again, wasn't sure how it would manifest. And then I got pregnant with our first son. I was really young. I was 24, super healthy, or so I thought.

And at 35 weeks of pregnancy, I came down with really crazy itching on the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet. And I mean, for anyone listening, you know that can incite panic when you hear that. You're like, "Oh my gosh, I itched a little bit yesterday," or whatever. If you had what I had, you would know for sure.

It kept me up at night, I couldn't get comfortable, it was awful. So, I ended up telling my midwife about these symptoms, and she'd been in midwifery for like 40 years. She was a veteran, she'd seen everything, and she told me, she was like, "You know, you're young, you're healthy, there's one thing we can test you for. I highly doubt you have that, but let's just be super safe and put your mind at ease."

And they ran my blood work, and less than 24 hours later they called me, and they were like, "You need to go to the hospital," which my midwives — this was a birthing center in Austin — they were like super hippie, super crunchy. So when they told me that I need to go to the hospital, I was like, "Okay, something very serious is going on."

So I went straight to high risk and ended up finding out that I had cholestasis of pregnancy, which is, you know, for those who don't know, your liver essentially stops functioning optimally, and you can have different severities of it.

Mine was pretty serious, where my bile acid levels were through the roof. So basically, our liver, of course, is one of our main detox pathways, it's one of our main detoxing organs, and its function is to pull the junk out and then to excrete it through your bowels.

And if it's not working properly, these toxins can actually pile up in your liver and pour into your bloodstream, and it can cause — a little bit of a trigger warning for traumatic birth instances — but it can cause stillbirth in baby. Allegedly it's not harmful to mom during pregnancy, but again, the outcomes for babies are not good with this condition if left untreated or if not diagnosed.

So it was quite a whirlwind. I went from thinking I was going to have this, like, gorgeous unmedicated birth to an emergency C-section with this crazy liver disorder I'd never heard of in my life.

Keep in mind, I've never been, like, a crazy drinker or anything like that, never had any liver problems to my knowledge up to that point, and I was so confused.

And once the dust had settled a little bit, and I'm in my hospital room, and my baby's in the NICU, which she had a pretty intense NICU stay, thanks to having to come so early, and likely thanks to toxin exposure, I kept wondering, what did I do wrong?

That was just the thing that kept going through my mind. What the heck did I do so wrong? I thought I was on the right path, taking the right prenatals, prepping for birth correctly, whatever, and I kept asking the doctors.

And I went to literally one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country with incredible doctors with tons of experience, and every single one of them told me it was 100% genetic. There's nothing I could have done to control it, and that I could expect to have this again in every future pregnancy.

And, you know, I'm wading through a lot with a NICU. It's my first baby. I'm confused. So I don't have the time to fully process that. But what was interesting is, they put me in — for anyone listening, if you've had a baby, they'll often, we'll talk about this because I would advise against this — but they'll throw you in postpartum underwear that the hospital gives. They stretch up over your belly.

And I had been in those for, you know, maybe a few hours after delivery, and I broke out in this crazy rash. It was literally the shape of the underwear, and I had never had a skin reaction in my life before of any kind.

And I, you know, took the underwear off, and I just had this urge to smell them, and it was this thick chemical smell. And that moment was a defining moment in my entire life, which was like, what the heck is in this? What are they putting in these things?

And it was quite a wild turn of events.

We got pregnant again four months postpartum, so I have Irish twins. And, you know, I'm again launched into this whole questioning phase of, like, does this mean my liver is going to shut down again? Like, what the heck's going on?

I still didn't have answers. I was just told that it was inevitable. Part of that actually made me feel better, because it was like, okay, I didn't do anything wrong. But then part of it made me very uncomfortable, because it was like, oh, okay, so I'm kind of damned no matter what. I'm going to have this condition. There's nothing I can do to avoid it.

And it's hard to explain, but there was just this clarity one evening where I was like, this doesn't feel right.

And I started doing research. At this point, I'm maybe 20 weeks pregnant with my second son, and I just went into the weeds on cholestasis of pregnancy. I read probably every piece of research that's out there, which isn't a lot.

Women's health, we don't have a lot of research on anything, much less a very rare disease of pregnancy.

And what struck me as really, really interesting, and the thing I couldn't stop thinking about, was in every piece of research there was some kind of mention of potential environmental factors.

And I kept thinking, you know, I'm not a doctor, never had health issues, but that doesn't seem right, that all of a sudden during pregnancy my liver stops working. That doesn't make sense to me.

Nobody in my family has ever had any kind of pregnancy issues. So, you know, not that that's a clear indicator of this not being genetic, but it just didn't add up.

And then I thought it was interesting. Well, why do they keep mentioning the environmental factors?

Well, probably because my liver is not working optimally at all to start, and my body's probably just not exhibiting symptoms. And pregnancy, with an increase in estrogen and an increase in toxin exposure, as well as inefficient detoxing pathways when you're pregnant because your body's managing so much, probably was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

And what if it is environmental?

And then I went down the rabbit hole. I had the, again, the aha moment of putting that underwear on, and I was like, oh, maybe I'm exposing myself to things I've never even once considered before.

And I would consider myself pretty healthy, but clearly something's not totally right.

So, long story short, I ended up getting the condition again. My levels were a lot lower than the first pregnancy, because I had started kind of trying to eliminate exposures in my life.

And after that, I was like, there's no way. Every mother in America should know about this right now.

Number one, that environmental exposures to things can absolutely impact your pregnancy and your life beyond pregnancy.

But number two, they're putting a lot of crazy stuff in our clothes.

And when I went down that deep dive, I accidentally found out that we have zero laws in this country protecting us from the chemicals in clothes specifically.

So people might be thinking, like, oh, clothes, yeah, yeah, all you know, I'll address that after everything else. That's just kind of like an extra little thing that's good to do if you can.

What I ended up finding out, and I don't want to fearmonger, but it is quite serious, is that clothing, in most studies we've done, happens to be one of the highest exposure instances to harmful chemicals of any consumer product category.

And it is sitting on your skin all day long.

And we can get into the types of chemicals that they're using, because I ended up finding out that xenoestrogens, which are fake estrogens, they fake your body out, actually ended up being a huge contributor, many think, to the very specific kind of breast cancer that my grandmother had and died of, as well as this very specific pregnancy condition that shut my liver down, essentially.

Then that felt to me more like a mandate from God.

I was like, okay, this is just too crazy that all of this connects, and that I just happened to figure all of this out. This must be my life's purpose.

So from that moment on, I dedicated literally my entire life to making sure every mom in America is aware of what's in her clothes and her baby's clothes, because that's a big deal too.

What are the risks of these terrible chemicals that are in our clothes, and is it from inhalation? Is it because it's against our largest organ? I mean, is it when we sweat? Can you just talk about exactly what the risk is?

Yeah, well, I think the most important thing that hardly anyone talks about, or much less knows about, is again the kinds of chemicals they're specifically using.

It just so happens that the chemicals that bind really, really well to fabrics, materials, especially plastic, are the same shape under a microscope as regular estrogen, right?

And the thing about xenoestrogens, which things like parabens, phthalates, and BPA are, is your body is actively searching for estrogen, especially women. We have more estrogen receptors, of course, than men do, primarily in our breasts and in our uterus.

And their entire job is to be searching for estrogen. They need estrogen to give them signals to keep our hormones balanced and doing the right things, especially during pregnancy.

And so it's sort of this perfect storm where these chemicals that they're putting in our clothes, all over our clothes, for all kinds of different reasons, happen to trick our estrogen receptors, and they bind to them.

And furthermore, these kinds of chemicals love fat, and they love oil.

So we think, oh, your skin is a barrier, you know? Obviously, some of it might move through because they're chemicals and they're volatile, but probably most of it is kept out.

And what we're finding is that's not actually true, because our skin is more like a brain than just a barrier, in that it actively lets certain things that it recognizes in and keeps other things out.

Well, guess what? Our skin recognizes these chemicals. They think that they belong in our body.

So it's not just about sweat or having a cut, or, you know, what we probably traditionally all thought about things moving through our skin.

It's actually a biochemical reaction or combination of events that can throw our bodies completely out of whack.

It's a very, very big deal.

Now, sweat, yes, sweat increases your likelihood of absorbing these. We have a study that shows up to 3,000% more dermal intake when you're sweating for things like PFAS, because that pathway is open, right? And the fluid allows an easier transport through our body, as well as it lifts the oil off of our skin, which just accelerates the chemicals moving into your body.

It's a very, very, very big deal. It's no small thing.

These are — this is not a situation of small potatoes. The chemicals in your clothes matter, and they are impacting you now. It's long-term exposure, you know.

But again, not every piece of clothing is full of chemicals. But unfortunately, we just don't know what has chemicals and what doesn't, because in this country they don't have to disclose the materials or ingredients in a piece of clothing.

They don't have to.

In fact, I would guess 95-plus percent of companies have no idea what chemicals are in their clothes themselves, because it's not mandated. They don't have to.

So that's why — and I can give the audience, you know, tips and tricks on how to best protect themselves — but it absolutely does matter.

Women are more impacted, and pregnant women are arguably the most impacted by the chemicals in their clothes.

Let's just explain this one more time.

The reason is mainly because these chemicals are similar in chemical structure to estrogen, and we do know that if you apply topical estrogen to your skin, it does get absorbed.

Because in my mind, I have just kind of dismissed some of this as, well, a lot of chemicals don't actually absorb through your skin. The purpose of your skin is to be a very protective barrier.

Do we really need to worry about all these chemicals actually getting deep into your body, or are they just surface irritants where if you have sensitive skin you're going to get a rash?

But if we're really talking about the problem being that these are the same molecular structure as estrogen, and estrogen can be absorbed transdermally, that it's now blocking your own natural estrogen, and we do know that xenoestrogens are risky in the body, and it's cumulative, and as you said, it's much, much higher risk when you're pregnant, that does change the story a little bit.

And I used to also think, well, a lot of these chemicals, don't they just get washed off? Like if you wash your new smelly clothes, you know, they have that chemical smell when you get them.

I always wash my clothes before I wear them, especially things like underwear and bras, but really everything.

Does it not just wash off in the washing machine, and then you don't have the absorption?

But I also recently have heard that the washing can break them down even more and make it so that you are even further increasing the risk of absorption.

Is that all true?

Well, you know, it's all nuanced, because there's hundreds of thousands of new chemicals on the market all the time.

So, like, most of the very harmful chemicals that we are worried about, yes, have xenoestrogenic qualities.

Some don't. Like PFAS are not xenoestrogenic. They are very concerning on their own, but they just function differently than a xenoestrogen.

So not all chemicals are xenoestrogens, but a lot that are used in clothing absolutely are, particularly the ones we're most worried about, aside from, again, PFAS.

The washing question is interesting.

Some chemicals can be reduced via washing, like formaldehyde. Formaldehyde, our evidence shows, is actually pretty deeply impacted by a wash cycle, which is why, yes, you should absolutely wash your clothes no matter what, just to make sure.

Now, when it comes to something like PFAS, there are things we call PFAAs, polyfluoroalkyl acids, and that is when they are oxidized or exposed to heat, sunlight, friction, et cetera.

Over time, they actually become far worse than just a PFAS.

And so over time, if you do have a piece of clothing with PFAS, yes, likely it will get worse over time the more you wear it, wash it, you know, and all of the above.

So it's nuanced. That's the problem here.

If we knew what was in what, we could make more educated risks when it came to what we wear, what we put on our kids.

But we don't know.

So in my opinion, when I'm talking to someone who's immunocompromised, someone who's pregnant, or kids, babies, I assume everything is guilty until proven otherwise.

And that's because the studies we do have are overwhelming in terms of what comes back with at least one harmful chemical.

And I mean truly overwhelming.

I don't like the message I'm giving, because I would love to be like, "Don't worry, don't be stressed," and there is validity to that, because stress is really bad for our bodies and our immune system and things.

And there are ways that we can attack this, rather, and address this without, you know, panicking and going into overdrive here.

However, this is serious, and it needs to be addressed very seriously, primarily by our government.

We shouldn't all have to be the ones with this burden of being a detective and trying to figure out what the heck is in our clothes and how to protect our families and ourselves.

That's ridiculous.

Our government has the burden to be protecting us from undue harm, which I argue the chemicals in our clothes absolutely pose. Undue harm. Absolutely.

We can't deny the facts that every single type of cancer is skyrocketing.

It's not like we can say, oh, you know, maybe this is true, but look, the population is pretty healthy, we're doing pretty well.

And in fact, when it comes to pregnancy, I have never heard so many people — I'm a midwife — and cholestasis was a rare diagnosis when I was in school and studying midwifery.

I mean, it was low on the list of problems that we were concerned about in pregnancy, and I hear about it constantly now.

And guess what?

Now we're getting research back showing that, huh, cholestasis may indicate later problems in life for the mom too, which, when I was in the hospital, they told me, nope, it's just a pregnancy thing.

It's like getting — what's the diabetes?

Gestational diabetes.

Yeah, it's like that, where it just happens and then you're good to go after. Don't worry about it.

Oh, except also that's not true, by the way.

Preeclampsia, cholestasis, gestational diabetes all increase your risk post-pregnancy as well of future health complications.

And preeclampsia also is related to the liver, as well as this cholestasis.

So everything is coming back to the same concept of toxic burden.

The body can only handle so much.

I mean, our livers are there to protect us, but there's a limit to what our evolution has been able to evolve to keep up with the environmental exposure that has way superseded where we are with our own bodies.

Absolutely.

I was told, if I remember correctly, when they diagnosed me, that it was less than 0.1% of the population that has cholestasis of pregnancy.

When I was in the NICU, I met two moms who were in there because of cholestasis of pregnancy.

And that's a very small sample size.

And I thought, huh, three of us. I mean, maybe more. I just talked to two of the moms.

Three of us have cholestasis, and you're telling me that this is a genetic condition with 0.1% of the population?

And the whole genetics argument doesn't even hold up, because obviously your ancestors would have had it.

I mean, like, how do we call everything genetics?

It's such a cop-out to call everything genetics when you look back a mere one generation or two or three and you don't see any sign of it.

But it's just what we're always told.

We're told that about cancer.

But according to one thing I read, estimates are that in the year 1900 about 1% of people died of cancer.

They certainly had a host of different problems, but cancer is so prevalent right now.

Obviously, it was the fact that everything became factory-built around the 1950s. Everything changed around that time.

I have a couple of questions for you before you get to the tips and tricks, which I cannot wait for.

I'll ask them together.

One is, is organic clothing the solution to all of this?

And then two is, is Europe any better off than we are because they have banned so many more chemicals than the United States?

Europe still has a very long way to go.

Most of what's happened so far has been a promise to eliminate certain things.

However, the framework as to how they address chemicals in their society as a whole is far stronger than ours.

For example, in Europe, specifically the UK, chemicals are assumed guilty until proven otherwise.

In our country, we see chemicals similar to how we see our freedoms as individuals, which is innocent until proven guilty.

And that makes it extremely hard because we're just assuming that these chemicals are safe until we have overwhelming evidence that they're not.

And guess who's going to make sure that the evidence isn't overwhelming?

It would be chemical companies.

The only evidence, whether you're talking DDT or cigarette smoke, is a matter of how many lawsuits get through.

Yeah.

That's the evidence.

Right.

And unless that happens, there's going to be nothing.

And even then.

Yeah.

So the other thing Europe does much better than us is they can ban classes of chemicals at one time, whereas we go chemical by chemical.

So we can say, okay, let's eliminate this class of PFAS, but there's a thousand different kinds of PFAS.

And so we have to go down the list and individually, historically, try to eliminate those.

Never mind the fact that clothing has never been a part of that conversation anyways.

So anytime we talk about PFAS, clothing is not automatically assumed to be a part of that because no agency in our government oversees textiles specifically.

Okay.

So, like, there's not even a place to go.

I had a friend who went to the White House, had a conversation with the head of the FDA, and was like, he's really interested in talking about clothes.

And this is a while back, but he said he'll talk to the person who's in charge of it.

And I'm like, well, that's funny because he's not going to find them.

There's no one in charge of clothing in this country.

So there's a lot that we just have fundamentally wrong with how we're not addressing, number one, chemicals, but especially clothing in this country, that Europe is doing a little bit better.

That being said, as a whole, universally, we are not doing anywhere near what we need to be doing to address chemicals.

All the supply chains are the same. The same supply chains selling into Europe are selling into the United States.

We're all using China.

There's nothing specifically wrong about China. Really, the same stuff happens everywhere, to be honest with you.

And I am deep in the supply chain weeds. I can tell you firsthand it's a problem everywhere, and nobody is doing enough to address it.

The United States just happens to be doing arguably the worst of all developed countries.

Now, your question about does organic solve it?

Yes and no.

So this is what I'm working so hard to fix, just by the way.

And when we talk about hope at the end, I want to really maintain that we are giving our lives to making sure that this isn't a problem anymore.

But today, organic, you can still add any kind of chemical to it after it's grown.

So to be organically grown means you're not using a certain list of chemicals to spray on the crop itself, but then post-growth, during production, you can add any chemical.

You are getting sold organic, and they can say organic cotton because the cotton itself was at one time organic, but it no longer is.

And they don't even have to list the chemicals added on top of it.

Right.

So this is what I'm fighting for right now with representatives at the federal level.

The good news is we have lawmakers who agree that this should be fixed, that this is not okay, and we are working to change this.

What we need is ingredient transparency law in this country so that a mother, when she is buying a baby blanket or a onesie or a maternity gown, whatever, has a list of what they're putting in these clothes, and she can therefore make a decision.

That's what we're fighting for.

Because if we go to the federal government and we say we need to ban these chemicals, it'll never happen.

At least it's going to take forever to happen because our government is bought out by Big Chemical.

That's just the truth.

I was just in D.C.

This is a great story of hope, but also a really, like, this is important for every mom listening to understand, and that's why I'm going to talk about this for a second.

It's a little bit off your question, but it's really important.

So I was just in D.C. specifically to protest a chemical liability shield that Bayer, previously known as Monsanto, tried to slide into a farm bill.

They understand that the average American is waking up to chemicals, and they don't want chemicals in their life because they're sick or somebody that they love is sick.

And so these chemical companies are scratching and clawing to protect themselves.

So they tried to slide this immunity shield in, which basically said you can't sue us if you get sick, into this farm bill.

And specifically, MAHA got sight of this and said, absolutely not, we're going to expose this.

So a bunch of us went to D.C. and protested.

We used social media to get loud.

We exposed what the chemical companies were trying to do.

Now, the interesting thing about this specific liability shield is the only thing our House of Representatives was voting on when it came to this was: do we protect chemical companies or not?

And that's important because many politicians, when they vote a certain way, will tell you, "Oh yeah, but I voted because of this factor, and it's not that simple, and we had this yada yada yada."

No.

For this specific vote, it was: do you side with the chemical companies or not?

And when they voted, we got access to exactly who was on whose side, right?

Every list, every name of people who chose chemical companies over people.

So what did we do?

All of us moms, by the way, or most of us moms.

We went to social media, and we got our audience to call their representatives and tell every single one who voted for Big Chemical that they will make it their life's mission to get them out of office in November.

And I'm talking about the same party.

We had Republicans calling Republicans saying, "I'm going to campaign against you in November," and Democrats calling Democrats.

Okay.

So what I'm getting at here, and we won, by the way.

The chemical liability shield did not go through because thousands of mothers across the United States called their representatives, and their representatives got scared and voted on behalf of the American people.

And that's a very important story they don't want you to know about because it feels like democracy in this country is dead.

It's not.

And we just watched it happen.

It's not at all.

Moms are incredibly powerful, and they're bipartisan when it comes to their children.

We don't care if you're red or you're blue.

This is what I always say.

It's cheesy.

If you come for our kids, we come for you.

Okay?

There's a huge movement going on right now in this country, and we should be talking about it because they don't want us to be talking about it, because we can actually get a lot of shit done, right?

So we're talking about all this depressing stuff.

Lots of good things are happening because moms specifically are very tired, and we will get a whole lot done when you threaten our children.

So back to the organic question.

There are two things you can look for to help when you're shopping.

So there's a lot that we just have fundamentally wrong with how we're not addressing, number one, chemicals, but especially clothing in this country, that Europe is doing a little bit better.

That being said, as a whole, universally, we are not doing anywhere near what we need to be doing to address chemicals.

All the supply chains are the same. The same supply chains selling into Europe are selling into the United States.

We're all using China.

There's nothing specifically wrong about China. Really, the same stuff happens everywhere, to be honest with you.

And I am deep in the supply chain weeds. I can tell you firsthand it's a problem everywhere, and nobody is doing enough to address it.

The United States just happens to be doing arguably the worst of all developed countries.

Now, your question about does organic solve it?

Yes and no.

So this is what I'm working so hard to fix, just by the way.

And when we talk about hope at the end, I want to really maintain that we are giving our lives to making sure that this isn't a problem anymore.

But today, organic, you can still add any kind of chemical to it after it's grown.

So to be organically grown means you're not using a certain list of chemicals to spray on the crop itself, but then post-growth, during production, you can add any chemical.

You are getting sold organic, and they can say organic cotton because the cotton itself was at one time organic, but it no longer is.

And they don't even have to list the chemicals added on top of it.

Right.

So this is what I'm fighting for right now with representatives at the federal level.

The good news is we have lawmakers who agree that this should be fixed, that this is not okay, and we are working to change this.

What we need is ingredient transparency law in this country so that a mother, when she is buying a baby blanket or a onesie or a maternity gown, whatever, has a list of what they're putting in these clothes, and she can therefore make a decision.

That's what we're fighting for.

Because if we go to the federal government and we say we need to ban these chemicals, it'll never happen.

At least it's going to take forever to happen because our government is bought out by Big Chemical.

That's just the truth.

I was just in D.C.

This is a great story of hope, but also a really, like, this is important for every mom listening to understand, and that's why I'm going to talk about this for a second.

It's a little bit off your question, but it's really important.

So I was just in D.C. specifically to protest a chemical liability shield that Bayer, previously known as Monsanto, tried to slide into a farm bill.

They understand that the average American is waking up to chemicals, and they don't want chemicals in their life because they're sick or somebody that they love is sick.

And so these chemical companies are scratching and clawing to protect themselves.

So they tried to slide this immunity shield in, which basically said you can't sue us if you get sick, into this farm bill.

And specifically, MAHA got sight of this and said, absolutely not, we're going to expose this.

So a bunch of us went to D.C. and protested.

We used social media to get loud.

We exposed what the chemical companies were trying to do.

Now, the interesting thing about this specific liability shield is the only thing our House of Representatives was voting on when it came to this was: do we protect chemical companies or not?

And that's important because many politicians, when they vote a certain way, will tell you, "Oh yeah, but I voted because of this factor, and it's not that simple, and we had this yada yada yada."

No.

For this specific vote, it was: do you side with the chemical companies or not?

And when they voted, we got access to exactly who was on whose side, right?

Every list, every name of people who chose chemical companies over people.

So what did we do?

All of us moms, by the way, or most of us moms.

We went to social media, and we got our audience to call their representatives and tell every single one who voted for Big Chemical that they will make it their life's mission to get them out of office in November.

And I'm talking about the same party.

We had Republicans calling Republicans saying, "I'm going to campaign against you in November," and Democrats calling Democrats.

Okay.

So what I'm getting at here, and we won, by the way.

The chemical liability shield did not go through because thousands of mothers across the United States called their representatives, and their representatives got scared and voted on behalf of the American people.

And that's a very important story they don't want you to know about because it feels like democracy in this country is dead.

It's not.

And we just watched it happen.

It's not at all.

Moms are incredibly powerful, and they're bipartisan when it comes to their children.

We don't care if you're red or you're blue.

This is what I always say.

It's cheesy.

If you come for our kids, we come for you.

Okay?

There's a huge movement going on right now in this country, and we should be talking about it because they don't want us to be talking about it, because we can actually get a lot of shit done, right?

So we're talking about all this depressing stuff.

Lots of good things are happening because moms specifically are very tired, and we will get a whole lot done when you threaten our children.

So back to the organic question.

There are two things you can look for to help when you're shopping.

So there's a lot that we just have fundamentally wrong with how we're not addressing, number one, chemicals, but especially clothing in this country, that Europe is doing a little bit better.

That being said, as a whole, universally, we are not doing anywhere near what we need to be doing to address chemicals.

All the supply chains are the same. The same supply chains selling into Europe are selling into the United States.

We're all using China.

There's nothing specifically wrong about China. Really, the same stuff happens everywhere, to be honest with you.

And I am deep in the supply chain weeds. I can tell you firsthand it's a problem everywhere, and nobody is doing enough to address it.

The United States just happens to be doing arguably the worst of all developed countries.

Now, your question about does organic solve it?

Yes and no.

So this is what I'm working so hard to fix, just by the way.

And when we talk about hope at the end, I want to really maintain that we are giving our lives to making sure that this isn't a problem anymore.

But today, organic, you can still add any kind of chemical to it after it's grown.

So to be organically grown means you're not using a certain list of chemicals to spray on the crop itself, but then post-growth, during production, you can add any chemical.

You are getting sold organic, and they can say organic cotton because the cotton itself was at one time organic, but it no longer is.

And they don't even have to list the chemicals added on top of it.

Right.

So this is what I'm fighting for right now with representatives at the federal level.

The good news is we have lawmakers who agree that this should be fixed, that this is not okay, and we are working to change this.

What we need is ingredient transparency law in this country so that a mother, when she is buying a baby blanket or a onesie or a maternity gown, whatever, has a list of what they're putting in these clothes, and she can therefore make a decision.

That's what we're fighting for.

Because if we go to the federal government and we say we need to ban these chemicals, it'll never happen.

At least it's going to take forever to happen because our government is bought out by Big Chemical.

That's just the truth.

I was just in D.C.

This is a great story of hope, but also a really, like, this is important for every mom listening to understand, and that's why I'm going to talk about this for a second.

It's a little bit off your question, but it's really important.

So I was just in D.C. specifically to protest a chemical liability shield that Bayer, previously known as Monsanto, tried to slide into a farm bill.

They understand that the average American is waking up to chemicals, and they don't want chemicals in their life because they're sick or somebody that they love is sick.

And so these chemical companies are scratching and clawing to protect themselves.

So they tried to slide this immunity shield in, which basically said you can't sue us if you get sick, into this farm bill.

And specifically, MAHA got sight of this and said, absolutely not, we're going to expose this.

So a bunch of us went to D.C. and protested.

We used social media to get loud.

We exposed what the chemical companies were trying to do.

Now, the interesting thing about this specific liability shield is the only thing our House of Representatives was voting on when it came to this was: do we protect chemical companies or not?

And that's important because many politicians, when they vote a certain way, will tell you, "Oh yeah, but I voted because of this factor, and it's not that simple, and we had this yada yada yada."

No.

For this specific vote, it was: do you side with the chemical companies or not?

And when they voted, we got access to exactly who was on whose side, right?

Every list, every name of people who chose chemical companies over people.

So what did we do?

All of us moms, by the way, or most of us moms.

We went to social media, and we got our audience to call their representatives and tell every single one who voted for Big Chemical that they will make it their life's mission to get them out of office in November.

And I'm talking about the same party.

We had Republicans calling Republicans saying, "I'm going to campaign against you in November," and Democrats calling Democrats.

Okay.

So what I'm getting at here, and we won, by the way.

The chemical liability shield did not go through because thousands of mothers across the United States called their representatives, and their representatives got scared and voted on behalf of the American people.

And that's a very important story they don't want you to know about because it feels like democracy in this country is dead.

It's not.

And we just watched it happen.

It's not at all.

Moms are incredibly powerful, and they're bipartisan when it comes to their children.

We don't care if you're red or you're blue.

This is what I always say.

It's cheesy.

If you come for our kids, we come for you.

Okay?

There's a huge movement going on right now in this country, and we should be talking about it because they don't want us to be talking about it, because we can actually get a lot of shit done, right?

So we're talking about all this depressing stuff.

Lots of good things are happening because moms specifically are very tired, and we will get a whole lot done when you threaten our children.

So back to the organic question.

There are two things you can look for to help when you're shopping.

This is what I tell every pregnant mother that I can get a hold of, is look for GOTS certification.

Number one, G-O-T-S, GOTS, Global Organic Textile Standard.

You have to be a natural fiber, you have to be grown organically, and also they have strict limits on the most popular harmful chemicals used in clothing.

That's the number one thing you can do today.

I don't buy kids' clothes that aren't GOTS-certified for my kids. I don't buy kids' blankets. I don't buy anything that's not GOTS-certified for kids. I just don't.

And by the way, that can also look like reducing what you buy.

Our kids don't need 30 outfits. They just don't.

Go naked as much as they can. That's how humans are supposed to be, right? Especially when we're that young and we're developing our immune systems and our body functions.

And then if they have to be in clothes, make sure it's GOTS-certified.

If you have to buy plastic, or if you can't find GOTS, OEKO-TEX is sort of the next step.

It's O-E-K-O-T-E-X, OEKO-TEX.

That doesn't have to be organic. It doesn't have to be a natural fiber.

But they do test across about 100 of the most harmful chemicals in clothing.

So it's an added assurance that at least you know BPA, phthalates, PFAS aren't at a certain level in your clothes.

So those are the two things I would look for.

Who created the GOTS certification?

They're a nonprofit, and they have third-party certifiers across the globe who certify on behalf of them to make sure that they're not being biased.

And to be clear, every entity has issues. They're not perfect. GOTS isn't the perfect answer ever. Nothing ever is.

But for today, it is absolutely the safest thing we do have to protect us.

Hannah, can we address what pregnant women must stop wearing or reduce wearing?

Like what you said about going naked is ideal. In a perfect world, we would spend a lot less time clothed, even as adults, but that's not realistic.

So can you tell the pregnant community what type of clothing that they really should just eliminate or reduce?

I struggle.

I struggle because pregnancy is such an overwhelming time.

And I can't reiterate enough that the goal is not to panic or stress. Cortisol spiking is not good for us in any way, shape, or form.

But if ever there were a time to be committed to clean clothing, it has to be pregnancy.

And I know so many are on such a tight budget, especially during pregnancy, because you wear the clothes for a few months, right?

What I highly, highly, highly recommend is selling your toxic plastic specifically.

If you can sell your plastic leggings or whatever on a marketplace, you know, maybe that comes with moral implications of selling it to somebody else. I don't know.

There's always going to be somebody who's interested in wearing plastic, though.

It's just like fast food. It's never going to disappear.

People always, who aren't going to care, or just don't want to have the conversation.

I have pregnant women in my community where this is a serious enough issue, and I tell them, sell what you can and use that money to buy GOTS-certified clothes.

Check thrifting apps first.

Especially if you find a brand that has a lot of GOTS options.

Go to thrifting apps like Depop or Mercari and look for organic clothing, GOTS specifically.

If you can find it.

Listen, when we're pregnant, I mean, you two are the experts, you know better than I, but our bodies are actively writing genetic code.

Epigenetics.

We're finding crazy research, more and more of it now, on even our chemical exposures during pregnancy, you know, to the babies in utero having impacts three to five generations later from one exposure event.

Because the dose isn't the poison anymore in terms of these kinds of chemicals.

So again, it's this weird thing to balance.

This is what I'm trying to balance with stressing the importance of it and also not causing women to have full mental breakdowns.

There's nothing to have a full mental breakdown over.

It's just very important.

So as much as you can, go to GOTS-certified clothing. As much as you can.

And knowing that you'll never be perfect, or you may not be able to go hardcore, work on detoxing your body in general.

Work on optimization of getting junk out of your body in general.

The more room you can give your body to work with, the more your body will work with you.

It's that simple.

And in order to help our bodies work in an imperfect world, we have to know what we're up against.

That's my opinion.

You have a right to know what's going on so you can optimize where you can, knowing you cannot be perfect in all areas.

So certainly don't panic.

Buy GOTS whenever you can.

Reduce clothing exposure as much as you can.

Sleep naked if you can. That's my thing.

Get some good sheets.

Costco has, it's called Purely Organic Sheets on the Costco app.

They were on sale for like 40 bucks.

They may even still be around $40.

And they're GOTS-certified organic cotton with safe dyes.

There are options.

You just have to look for them, and you have to be comfortable with having, okay, one pair of sheets and washing them.

We don't need five pairs of sheets.

So I'm not asking women to go out and buy a bunch of new stuff.

I'm actually asking women to reduce.

Reduce the plastic you're wearing.

Reduce new clothes.

As little new clothes as you can buy.

Do that.

I really think that with the amount of awareness that we now have and the amount of options that are now on the market, or starting to become on the market, swap groups will be huge for pregnant women.

I think that if you're in a community of like-minded pregnant women, or just moms, or what have you, even in my tiny, tiny little community, we drop clothes we have that are even sized a little bigger and clean off to our pregnant friends.

And we just cycle through.

And we all know, like, the next person who's pregnant, we're going to bring our maternity clothes over there.

There are creative ways to really go back to that community-minded aspect of a village.

Would it actually make sense for women during pregnancy to just go thrifting and find older clothes, or clothes from the '70s, '80s, '90s, potentially less chemical-laden? Or would that make a difference?

Plastic, no matter what, gets worse over time.

So let's just get that out of the way.

If it's plastic, I actually think, in some instances, it's likely worse from microplastic shedding and oxidization.

Oxidation. I actually always say that word wrong. It's oxidation.

Can you define what plastic clothes are?

Does that just mean, like, athletic wear, like leggings?

It's nylon, spandex, polyester, elastane, acrylic.

You know, there's a whole bunch of things.

I mean, if you don't know what something is, look it up.

And if it interests you, say, "Is this plastic?" Because most of that stuff is plastic.

In terms of natural fibers, thrifted, there's a lot of discourse on yes or no.

Again, it's just really hard to know.

We don't know what chemicals are in what.

And frankly, we actually used to have even...

I don't know.

I honestly don't know.

I've gone back and forth in this career on whether thrifting makes sense or not.

That's why I like the thrifting apps, because you can actually search organic.

And I like that better.

And you can search for brands that you trust versus, like, your local Goodwill.

And, you know, I've found GOTS-certified organic shirts before on Mercari for $3.

They're out there.

You just have to treat it a little bit like a sport, okay?

It's like you have to be looking and constantly refreshing your search terms.

But guys, here's the thing.

This is unfair.

That's the conclusion here.

We shouldn't be having this conversation.

Are you serious?

Do I really have to go back and forth on if thrifting is safer or not?

And, like, when it became safer and when it didn't?

That's ridiculous.

That's what we're fighting for.

This is stupid.

This doesn't make sense.

This is not okay.

It's unfair.

We live in a first-world country with the ability to perform heart surgery in utero on babies, okay?

Why are we having this conversation?

That is what mothers across this country are asking right now.

Why should we have this burden of not even knowing what's in our clothes?

You guys should at least have to tell us what's in our clothes.

And then if we have to carry the burden of then deciding what we want to buy and don't want to buy, okay, it's a place to start.

But are you serious?

We don't even have access to informed consent in this country when it comes to what we place on our bodies, literally from the time we come out of the womb until the time we die.

I look back now and I'm like, look at the baby blankets they're wrapping our babies in.

What do we think that's washed in?

Well, the fact that HHS doesn't have an agency dedicated to this, you're right.

It didn't even occur to me before today.

It's just shocking.

It's shocking.

This is something that affects the lives of every single human being.

It's just unbelievable.

So this episode is coming out in late August, and that's close to when your line of bras are coming out, which I think that we should tell everyone about.

So first of all, where can they become a part of this moms group that was so successful in reaching congresspeople and getting them to respond?

And the second is, how can they find out about your line of bras?

Fantastic question.

Number one, if you go to my website, which is www.thecleanclothingchick.com, I have live active petitions you can sign today, super easy, that make a huge difference.

I'm literally printing these out and taking them directly to the people who make our laws.

Your voice matters.

They need to see what their constituents care about.

That's the easiest thing you can do literally today.

My bra, our bra, will be out this fall.

It will have several styles.

Again, we're going for the best, so it took us almost three years to make this as great as it is.

But it'll be a one-stop shop for your bra basics, as well as underwear.

So just so women don't feel too overwhelmed about this conversation, because this is a long-term mission and you are so passionate about it and so dedicated, I feel really confident and excited that change will come in time.

But women listening to this right now are probably feeling a little afraid.

Just a few simple things.

For example, sleeping undressed.

That's half the day.

Half the day you can be out of those clothes.

Or if you don't feel comfortable sleeping naked, sleep in maybe silk or a white cotton T-shirt, something undyed, something GOTS-certified, or a natural fiber.

So that's a huge step that pregnant women can take to reduce their toxic burden.

Second, maybe when they're exercising, if all you did was change the clothes that you exercise in, change the clothes you sweat in.

First of all, you should sweat because you talked about supporting your liver being a way to help reduce this, like reduce the toxic accumulation, reduce the burden, detox your body.

The most important way you can do that is through movement and sweating.

So sweat, but be conscientious about the clothes you wear when you sweat.

If that's the only thing you get out of this and change, and maybe then bras and underwear would be next.

They're all great pieces of advice.

And again, our bodies are incredible.

They can do so much with very little leeway.

I mean, if we had a visualization of every chemical or harmful thing that was around us every single day, it's a miracle that we are so healthy, to be honest.

Our bodies are incredible.

We need sunlight, we need good water, we need as much good food as we can get, we need movement, and we just need to reduce the bad things when we can.

And again, that's why I'm saying, don't — I'm not telling you to go out and buy a whole bunch of new stuff.

I'm actually telling you to just do your best to reduce things out of your life.

You know, like, we don't need, I would guess, 75% of the products we have in our house.

Like, we really super don't.

If we can go simple and back to our roots and the basics, you will do so, so, so, so much better.

Yeah, I think that all of your pieces of advice were awesome.

I would say underwear.

You know, Pact has super affordable cleaner options.

You know, you can get like a...

Yeah, they're super affordable.

There is Q for Quinn.

It's a little bit more expensive, but you can actually wear their stuff all the time, like underwear during pregnancy, post-pregnancy, depending on where you're at in your pregnancy.

Q for Quinn is awesome.

And they have bras, like bralettes specifically.

The Very Good Bra has a nursing bra that's the cleanest I've found on the market.

It's pretty expensive, but you can literally use one bra.

That's the other thing we're saying, is we are just so conditioned to think we need three nursing bras.

Just get one.

And when it's in the wash, you're not wearing a bra.

And then as soon as it's done washing, you put the bra back on.

Just minimize, and you'll be doing so much.