I totally fell for poly UPF/sun shirt marketing :(

I’ve made a lot of progress over the last few years slowly eliminating plastics/synthetics from my closet, with one exception: sun shirts. The benefits of skin cancer prevention outweighed the harms of the polyester fabrics, or so I thought.

But I’ve recently been learning a lot about various textiles, the production of materials, their common properties, etc., and it turns out polyester is an effective sun barrier in general. A decently and densely woven polyester fabric screens both UVA and UVB rays in a matter amounting to at least a UPF rating of 30+.

I say this NOT to promote consumption of polyester clothing or make promises of its sun protecting properties, but to highlight the fact that polyester has always done this. This trait has always been present. We’ve all just been on the receiving end of new marketing pushes, telling us to buy poly clothing because it’s actually a beneficial product for our health.

Maybe this is just news to me and not news to everyone else, I don’t know. But I feel like such a sucker. I totally made an exception for these products because I thought they were designed for sun protection. If I had known this was just a covert PR campaign for something plastic clothing always did anyway, I never, ever would have purchased them.

There are other UPF alternatives, of course. They’re generally more expensive, which is frustrating, but those are the ones I’ll choose if I need to purchase anything else in the future. But even “natural” fibers can be nefarious: a lot of newer “washable” wool, for example, is being treated with poly resins to make it softer and less likely to shrink. It’s wool coated in plastic 😩

It just feels more and more impossible to find actually ethical and sustainable clothing options. I have recently learned you can wash zinc oxide into your clothes to add additional UPF protection, and I think I’ll try to lean into in an attempt to avoid consuming additional articles of clothing in general.