Golf Magazine
Granted polyester is the most popular fiber used in sports apparel. I wonder why?
Do you know it takes annually 70 million barrels of oil to make your polyester fiber for textiles..
The same polyester abbreviated to PET, yes there are numerous varieties, is also used to make plastic drinking bottles. Handy for sports brands to make and provide you with both plastic clothing and plastic drinking bottles from the same source material. To manufacture PET you need to use a catalyst and the catalyst of choice, bonded into 85% of all sports apparel, is Antimony. Now, Antimony just happens to be a cancer causing heavy metal. But don't worry about that, as the chemical industry will tell you it is firmly bonded into the finished polymer. The only trouble is it is released into the environment as a gas; antimony trioxide during production and when incinerated for landfill.
So there you are, most of you are playing sport in plastic shirts, derived from petroleum, bonded with a cancer causing element. Isn't it refreshing to know what you are really wearing next to your skin and interacting with via sweating?
Funny how none of this is mentioned in sports apparel reviews or by sports brands or their sponsored athletes. Perhaps we all need to start asking questions about the sport apparel we endorse, if we want to leave a safer, less polluted environment for our children.
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