PFAS: The four‑letter fix fashion misreads

YORK – There is a number worth holding in mind before anything else in this piece is read: depending on how the class is defined, anywhere from several thousand to millions of distinct chemical structures currently fall under the regulatory and communicative umbrella of "PFAS".

Yet the fashion and textile industry, in its public communication, procurement policy, certification standards, and sustainability reporting, treats this entire heterogeneous class as though it were a single substance with a single risk profile – and then wonders why its scientific credibility is not taken seriously by the people who study the subject.