A few months ago, Lane Koch made the decision to purge all plastic-based fabrics from her family’s closets and replace them with natural fibers like cotton and linen.
Mr. Koch, a longtime Republican political strategist and senior staffer on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, has long avoided processed foods and eliminated plastic utensils from his kitchen about a decade ago. But she told me that even though she cared about what she put in her body, she paid little attention to what she put in it. above her body.
Next, she watched the Netflix documentary The Plastic Detox, which follows six infertile couples who reduce the amount of plastic in their lives in order to conceive. By the end of the film, three pairs have babies.
Although Koch wasn’t trying to get pregnant, the idea resonated with her. “If exposure to plastics is having such a big impact on people’s fertility, it must definitely be impacting our health in many different areas,” she mused.
That concern came to her mind a few days later when her 3-year-old woke up sick and happened to be wearing polyester clothing. “There was a moment when I had an epiphany that I had to get her out of her pajamas,” Koch said.
Scientists told me that any risks expected from plastic-based clothing would accumulate over many years, not overnight. But Koch was convinced. She said she didn’t think any of the studies accurately replicated the situation her child experienced, and questioned the incentives behind many scientific studies anyway.
She has since gotten rid of 90% of her closet. Her children didn’t have synthetics, but she threw them away as well. She spent hundreds of dollars, mostly at thrift stores, replacing her bedding with 100% cotton sheets and buying new socks, underwear and pajamas. We are “microdosing poison at a thousand different points every day,” she told me. The synthetic fiber is now complete.
How fabric content became an obsession
In recent years, shoppers have become more aware of fabric content. “When did you start caring about what’s in your fabric?” one popular Reddit post reads. “Now I can’t stop reading labels.” Searches related to natural fibers began surging on Google in 2024 and have been increasing ever since. Elena Karpova, a professor of consumer apparel retail research at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told me that in a recent unpublished study, one of her graduate students found that fiber content is a major factor influencing Gen Z shoppers. Brands have also capitalized on the hype, with mainstream stores like Gap and J.Crew now allowing online shoppers to filter by material.
For many, this concern is aesthetic. As fast fashion proliferated and retailers cut costs, the quality of clothing declined. Consumers are aware of this decline and are looking for ways to avoid it. Choosing natural fibers is one solution, but not the whole solution. The quality of a garment is determined by many factors, including its construction. However, construction evaluation is complex. According to Hannah Lee, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University’s Wilson College of Textiles, one of the appeals of “all-natural fibers” is that anyone can easily check it out, making it easier for brands to promote it.
As the desire for natural fiber clothing grows, a new group of adherents has been found in people like Koch, whose aims are more health than clothing, and even political. Nowadays, health-conscious men are concerned about their virility and are switching from polyester to cotton underwear. The conservative women’s magazine Evie encouraged its readers to wear “natural fiber staples” rather than synthetics, but claimed synthetics “disturb hormones.” This sentiment coincides with the rise of Maha. Maha’s recent report on child health also addresses the dangers of microplastics in clothing.
These concerns are amplified on social media, with half of adults under 50 saying they have access to information about their health. Countless TikTokers have claimed that our clothes are making us sick. This is exactly the type of sensational content that algorithms thrive on. This phenomenon has become the epitome of modern wellness culture. Complex scientific issues are flattened into exaggerated claims, undermining trust and encouraging people to buy more.
The real health effects of plastic-based clothing
Concerns about plastic-based clothing have some basis. As many people know, plastic production is harmful to our environment and health, said Phil Landrigan, a professor of biology and public health at Boston University and co-author of an international report on the subject. But most of the harm doesn’t come from the people wearing the clothes. Illnesses and deaths caused by plastics are primarily a mixture of workplace accidents and illnesses caused by exhaust fumes and pollution, he said.
The potential risks of wearing synthetic materials are less immediate and difficult to quantify. Here, scientists are more concerned about the plastic in clothing than the chemicals used to process it. Chemicals such as phthalates, bisphenols, Pfas, and brominated flame retardants are toxic and have been linked to health problems such as cancer, heart attacks, infertility, and immunosuppression.
But association is not the same as cause. In order for a chemical to harm us, our skin must absorb it. Although it is possible, the risk is generally lower than other modes of exposure. Sheila Satyanarayana, a professor of pediatrics at Seattle Children’s Hospital who studies endocrine-disrupting chemicals in plastics, told me in an email that she’s more worried about plastics in food, cookware, and even personal care products like creams and perfumes.
Audrey Gaskins, a professor at Emory University who studies how the environment affects fertility, said that for some people, the main route of exposure to these chemicals may be through water sources. Although much depends on a person’s lifestyle and environment, “dermal absorption is probably not the average person’s primary exposure to these chemicals,” Gaskins said.
In certain situations, skin absorption may be increased. Mohamed Abdallah, a professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Birmingham, told me that research he and his colleagues conducted found that people were at greater risk when they were sweating. However, it was not possible to quantify the magnitude of the risk. He said it is impossible to quantify the overall risk of wearing synthetic fabrics because many different factors affect how much the skin absorbs. “What chemicals are we talking about?” Abdallah asked. “How much is added to this fabric? How long has this clothing been worn? What type of exercise has been done and for how long?”
These factors accumulate over a lifetime and mix with other exposures. “This is not a case of acute toxicity,” Abdallah said. It’s difficult to measure, he said, because no one “gets sick right away” after one workout at the gym wearing plastic leggings.
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None of the scientists I spoke to avoided synthetic fibers completely, but many said they were limiting their use. During the interview, Landrigan primarily wore natural fibers, but also wore a fleece vest made of nylon flock. He believes there is a good case for avoiding synthetic materials, given the harms of plastic production. Abdallah told me he loves cotton, even for sweat stains from the gym. Satyanarayana also changed his training gear and underwear.
While everyone agreed that wearing natural fibers doesn’t hurt and is probably the least risky route, no one seemed too worried about the synthetics left in their closets.
When I asked Satyanarayana about the claims that our clothes make us sick and are the root cause of modern infertility, she was clear: “There is no evidence to support this at this time,” she wrote. “There is evidence that these chemicals are harmful, but we may be getting most of them from other sources.”
Our growing distrust “unnatural”‘
Although the study has many asterisks, Gaskins understands “why people connected the dots.” Colleen Derkach, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Why Wellness Sells, told me that in her work studying wellness culture, one point keeps coming up.
The advice to buy natural is persuasive. Because it acknowledges that fear and provides an answer. Alan Levinovitz, a professor at James Madison University and author of “The Natural,” said the solutions the technique touts are especially powerful given the long history of worshiping nature and rejecting the unnatural.
At first glance, ditching rayon and nylon in favor of natural fibers may seem harmless, but even potentially beneficial. And as such, to a large extent (apart from the waste and possible extra purchases that may follow).
But the underlying motive may suggest something more serious. Believing that the clothes we wear are making us sick may reflect a larger belief that “the systems that are in place to protect us are not working,” Levinowitz explained. That fear, he said, “leads us to all kinds of vulnerabilities,” which could lead to public figures saying, “They fooled you about the clothes. What else do you think they fooled?”
According to Derkach and Levinowitz, wearing natural fibers can be a way to reassert agency in a world that can often feel confusing and dangerous. Nashville-based singer-songwriter Ali Walker told me that for years she had suffered from conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome, and polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome (PMOS, formerly known as PCOS), but that doctors couldn’t seem to treat her symptoms. She then visited a functional medicine doctor who ordered blood tests, had her take supplements, and recommended that she be tested for any toxins she may have been exposed to.
With this edict, Walker’s health was restored into her own hands. After her appointment, Walker said, “I study everything day and night and ask myself, what is the healthiest version of everything I touch in life?” She purged her closet of synthetic fabrics (except for the costumes she had to wear for performances) and bought some new natural fiber basics, but her purchases were limited.
“Once you get into this aspect of ‘toxic-free living,’ there’s no going back,” she told me. “For me, getting more and more healthy is like a hobby.”
She does not identify as part of Maha and is unsure about the most vehement claims about synthetics. Her reason for wearing natural fibers instead of plastic is simple. “If there’s another option, why not go for it?” In the future, she hopes to replace synthetic rugs with wool and vinyl flooring with wood.
For Koch, projects to optimize her and her family’s health are also underway. In the long term, she would like to install a water filtration system throughout the house, but for now she plans to purchase a snake plant for air purification. She said she takes health very seriously, in part because her youngest child is in his late 30s, nearly 20 years older than the other children’s parents. She doesn’t want her age to stop her from being an active parent or deny her daughter a rich childhood.
Koch knows that there are many things that are out of her control when it comes to her health. It’s not the pesticides your neighbors use or the contamination of your water supply. She also lost trust that the “three-letter institution” would keep her safe.
“But you can control what you put on your body,” she says. What she wears may not have a “life-or-death” impact, she acknowledged. But what if it gives you even the slightest chance of improving your health? For her, it’s “worth it.”
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Kate Clay is a freelance writer, reporter, and editor based in Brooklyn, New York, who writes about how we live in the broader sense of the word.
