Your Skin Could Be Absorbing Chemicals from Your Workout Clothes: Study Finds
By Mia Barnes, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Body+Mind Magazine.
Are your gym clothes safe to wear? Word is out that you might unwittingly subject your body’s endocrine system to microplastics containing harmful chemicals every time you complete your daily workout.
While this news is concerning, you should examine the facts before you write off all your expensive gym wear. What is your endocrine system, and why is it important? What are microplastics, and do all workout clothes contain them? Are only gym clothes affected? Answering these relevant questions provides perspective and greater understanding.
What is Your Endocrine System?
Your endocrine system is the glands, organs and tissues that are your body’s home to the epithelial tissues that make and release your hormones — the chemicals in charge of delivering and monitoring messages from your bloodstream and into your muscles, skin and other tissue cells. In other words, hormones are essential for relaying the information necessary for your continued health and living.
With over 50 hormones, your endocrine system is as critical to your body’s functioning as your essential organs. The smooth functioning of your heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas, ovaries and testicles relies on the system. Your hormones regulate metabolism, blood pressure and sugar regulation, fluids and electrolytes, growth, sexual function, reproductive process and mood.
Hormone balance is imperative to maintaining good health. If hormones are even slightly imbalanced, they can cause health fluctuations that noticeably change your body and health status. With the endocrine system responsible for maintaining your balanced hormone levels, you can understand how essential this is to keep you as the person you are. Harmful chemicals in microplastics can change this status quo.
What are Microplastics?
All microplastics are under 5 millimeters in diameter and fall into two distinctive categories. Secondary microplastics break into smaller pieces from their original forms of plastic packets, bottles and netting, while companies intentionally manufacture primary microplastics for use in clothing, beads and plastic pellets. Once in the atmosphere, they can remain undetected.
Due to microplastics’ chemical structure, hazardous chemicals harmful to your body’s endocrine system regularly attach to both categories through the environment and become part of their makeup, while manufacturers use others in their processes. These chemicals can include brominated flame retardants (BFR), pesticides, dioxins, phthalates and synthetic chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA), which several European Union countries have banned in certain forms.
How Can Your Workout Clothes Put You at Risk?
In 2022, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) found a high presence of BPA in various sports bras from leading brands, with athletic shirts from the same and other brands returning similar results. A point to note is that this study only included polyester and Spandex-based workout wear.
However, a year later, researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom released findings indicating that BFR compounds used to prevent burning in many consumer products, including many synthetic fabrics, could transfer from sweat into human bodies.
Most workout clothes consist of synthetic fabrics — polyester, nylon and Spandex — and their tight-fitting nature, combined with strenuous gym activity, make them serious candidates for transferring these toxic chemicals via high sweat content back into the body. Ultimately, they reach your body’s endocrine system.
Besides severe defects in fetuses, BPA exposure could cause high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems and diabetes in people of all ages. Meanwhile, BFR has links to cancer, thyroid problems and fetal development problems.
These toxic chemicals aren’t limited to workout clothing — all synthetic materials containing microplastics are susceptible to them. In gym wear, however, their tight-fitting quality and the additional sweat exercising produces make them higher-risk clothing items. So, what are the answers for fitness enthusiasts?
Keep Calm and Change Your Reality
Some makeup products, including foundation, mascara and eyeliner, also contain microplastics, as do many brands of shampoo, toothpaste and facial scrub. Most shellfish, salt, honey and even your drinking water have significant traces of microplastics. All humans, not only health buffs, need to be more aware of what they wear, use and consume.
Changing your exercise routine could lower the risk of sweating in your workout gear. Swimming is an excellent cardiovascular activity that works joints and tones muscles while keeping you cool and naturally soothing your body and mind. Swimming isn’t for everybody, but it is an alternative if you want to exercise without the risk of harmful chemical-infused sweat.
Be concerned about what you wear to the gym, although considering how rife microplastics are in our environment, perhaps don’t be alarmist. Instead, believe that excess sweat combined with your synthetics makes workouts, along with sports like athletics, cycling and any other sports where you wear tight-fitting sports clothing, a little riskier. Seeking alternative forms of non-toxic workout clothing will ease your mind and body.
How to Select, Use and Treat Your Workout Gear
Slow fashion has become a popular term in recent years after much discussion of the environmental and ethical flaws in fast fashion surfaced. These terms pertain not only to the fashion industry but also to the workout and sportswear markets. Some issues surrounding the fast fashion industry relate to inhumane labor methods, unfair trading, excessive water consumption, textile pollutants and chemical exposure.
Unlike the others, the last two reasons haven’t diminished according to the most recent findings. Nevertheless, many slow fashion manufacturers are improving global accessibility to safer and more sustainable products. These products and certain helpful suggestions can help you lessen the risk you’re exposed to while working out.
Choose Non-Synthetic and Organic Workout Clothes
Slow fashion promotes natural fiber clothing. Workout clothing is available in several natural fibers, and while these fabrics can still be subject to pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, this exposure is different and far more significant in microplastic synthetic clothing. A trick is to check the involved brands’ advertised eco-friendliness and sustainability practices and choose organic clothing before you buy. Look out for organic products made from the following:
- Bamboo
- Cotton
- Hemp
- Linen
- Silk
While many of these activewear clothes might fit slightly looser, their specific designs for working out — including sports bras, workout tops, tanks, gym pants, bike shorts, leggings, socks, sneakers and even hoodies for before and after your gym work — are perfect replacements for synthetics. Most companies offer unisex, menswear and ladies’ wear options.
While you might not find the same wide range of gym shoes, a good pair of cotton or hemp socks will ensure most of the sweat from your feet is cleaner and reduce chemical infiltration. When buying workout shoes, pay attention to choosing the best ones for the exercise you’re doing that fit correctly for comfort and to prevent injury or too much slipping, which creates more sweat.
Leave Your New Gym Clothes in the Sun
If you buy new workout wear and are concerned about toxic chemicals, turn them inside out and leave them in the sun before you wash them. When you can’t smell they’re new anymore, bring them inside and take the next step.
Wash Your New Workout Clothes Before You Wear Them
Even with organic clothing, you could have some contact microplastics, so pop them in the wash before you wear them. Using a conventional laundry detergent that contains chemicals defeats the object, so stock up on laundry products that are biodegradable, human-safe and fragrance-free.
If you’re still wearing synthetic clothing, take extra precautions by using a wash bag to restrict microplastics shedding onto other clothes in the machine. These little suggestions might not seem like much, but if you’re serious about limiting or eliminating your health risks, they’re worth trying.
Wash Your Workout Clothes in Cold Water
Washing synthetic or organic workout clothes in cold water reduces indirect exposure to microplastics in synthetics, as warm water increases the chance of lighter synthetics breaking and releasing plastic pollutants. Manufacturers suggest that consumers wash silk, cotton and animal fiber organic clothing in cold water as it offers better fabric protection than warm washing. Besides, colors in most clothing fade more quickly when washing in hot water.
Using cold water to wash also reduces your greenhouse gas footprint, as many detergent manufacturers have changed their manufacturing processes so their brands can be as effective in low water temperatures. If 75% of Americans and Canadians wash with cold water, carbon dioxide emissions will reduce by 27 million metric tons over the next decade, so you’re substantially reducing your carbon footprint.
Buy Used Gym Clothes for Added Sustainability
Did you know it takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow the cotton for one pair of blue jeans? It sounds incredible, but visiting a thrift shop and finding a decent second-hand pair significantly assists sustainability initiatives. Sure, you don’t work out in your jeans, but you get the idea.
Any new garment production demands a significant amount of natural resources, so wearing good-quality second-hand gym wear can help, too. Wearing a clothing item immediately reduces the chemicals used in its manufacture, so finding and wearing high-quality used clothing is safer than wearing the equivalent new garment.
Change Immediately After Your Workout
Leaving the gym in your workout clothing means less exposure to microplastics and toxic chemicals that bind to them and enter your body through your sweat. Immediately showering after a gym session cleanses your skin of exposed sweat particles, and changing into fresh, clean, non-synthetic clothing reduces risk even further.
Following up your shower with a sauna creates new sweat that helps to release toxins within your body’s skin cells. You’ll want to shower and freshen up again afterward, though.
Consider Which Workout Clothes to Use
Although the mentioned studies are still new, and there’s still much to discover, the results offer further warnings about the dangers of microplastics and how toxic chemicals can find ways to enter human bodies.
If you’re a gym fanatic, exercise caution with your gym clothes. After all, working out is about improving and maintaining your health.
About the Author
Mia Barnes has been a freelance writer for over 4 years with expertise in healthy living and sustainability. Mia is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the online publication, Body+Mind Magazine.