Scientists Warn Kids And Parents About Dangerous Halloween Costumes
By now, we’ve all heard time and time again that we need to check our children’s Halloween candy for signs of tampering, including drugs, razor blades, poison, and any other signal that the neighborhood creep has been messing with the perfect Twix formula. Now, according to a write-up in The Guardian, environmental researchers are warning against something much more dangerous that isn’t an annual hoax. Apparently, many children’s Halloween costumes have been found to contain trace amounts of dangerous chemicals, including BPA plastics, cadmium, and even lead.
Halloween Costumes Are Made Cheap
As researchers have pointed out, Halloween costumes are basically the epitome of fast fashion since most of them are designed for one-time use, only to be discarded or handed down to younger siblings for future trick-or-treating. Best case scenario, maybe you get three nights out in one of these cheap, mass-produced Marvel masks before it either breaks or your kid decides that they’re suddenly into pirates instead. As a result, manufacturers have no incentive to produce these suits with quality materials, nor can they afford to charge premium prices.
Whistleblower Came Out Against Major Retailers
This means that outlets such as Spirit Halloween and Halloween Express have been delivering costumes that violate the minimum amount of acceptable toxins in the state of California, leaving some whistleblowers in a frenzy. As representatives from the Center for Environmental Health have pointed out, even the smallest amount of lead exposure can be extremely dangerous for human health, especially to children, and can lead to a myriad of side effects and health complications.
Regular exposure to lead has been linked to increased chances of nervous system damage, intellectual disabilities, kidney and liver problems, and even brain damage. Cadmium and BPA are also known to be dangerous in large quantities and can lead to infertility, breast cancer, and behavioral disorders.
Harmful Chemicals
Even before the investigation into Halloween costumes, environmentalists have maligned fast fashion brands such as Temu, Shein, Wish, and others for their dangerous quantity of toxic materials, which seem to be completely unregulated by foreign markets. These toxic fabrics can be exacerbated by heat, meaning sweating in these clothes or even laundering them could spread the harmful cadmium to other items or leech them into your body.
Major Costume Recalls Over The Last Few Years
Major brands like Disney are not above this dangerous fast fashion trend, as the entertainment giant saw major recalls for lead in children’s clothing just a few years ago. Fashion industry leaders like Ikea and H&M have also sold polyester fabrics, which have tested positive for other endocrine disruptors, so clearly, this issue goes much deeper than just Halloween costumes. Still, Halloween costumes seem to be the worst of the bunch by far since manufacturers are not incentivized to carefully labor over the cheap one-time-only outfits.
Homemade Is The Way To Go
So, maybe homemade Halloween costumes and DIY cosplays are the way to go from now on. Unless your child is old enough that they’re no longer growing like a weed, then perhaps you can afford to splurge on a spooky outfit that can be worn multiple times. In any case, it’s quite alarming to learn that we’ve been focussing on the threat of toxic Halloween candy all these years when the proverbial call was coming from inside our own homes all along.
Source: The Guardian
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