Wear Pact Organic Leggings PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Lab Report

Do Wear Pact Organic Leggings contain PFAS “forever chemical” contamination? We sent a pair off to an EPA-certified laboratory to find out. You’ve trusted Mamavation to bring you topics like safest period underwear without PFAS “forever chemicals,” best cookware sans PFAS “forever chemicals” or nanoparticles, or best organic mattresses without PFAS chemicals, now join us for the laboratory results of Wear Pact Organic Leggings.

Disclosure: This post was medically reviewed by Sondra Strand, RN, BSN, PHN. This post also contains affiliate links. 

Mamavation’s PFAS “Forever Chemical” Testing Project

For the past year, Mamavation has been testing everyday food and consumer products looking for indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” and reporting back to the community on the findings here. PFAS (aka PFCs or perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA and PFOS) are added to many consumer products we purchase to make them “stain-resistant,” “grease-proof,” and “water-resistant.” They are toxic, ubiquitous, and persistent.

Mamavation is primarily looking at “contamination levels” which are levels of PFAS that are not intentionally added but mostly come about through manufacturing processes and from the indirect additives used like cleaning products used on machinery & equipment, Teflon coating on machinery, sprays used to lubricate equipment, or fluorinated plastics.

Mamavation community readers are trying to avoid PFAS as much as possible and our hope is that we can help inform our readers based on our own commissioned laboratory studies. Here’s what we’ve been working on and what is to come:

• Period underwear (20 brands)
• Ketchup (12 brands)
• Parchment paper (5 brands)
• Bamboo Flooring (8 brands)
• Green Beauty Cosmetics (Over 80 products coming soon!)
• Athletic Pants (Over 30 brands coming soon!)
• Sports Bras (Over 15 brands coming soon!)
• Spaghetti Sauces & Tomato Sauces (Over 70 products coming soon!)
• Organic baby foods (10 popular brands coming soon!)

Potential Health Effects of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” from Research Over Decades

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (aka PFAS “forever chemicals”) have been detected all over the United States in water systems, soil, ambient air, household dust, cookware, food packaging, carpeting, winter coats, food, & cosmetics. Because they are found in so many different places, this is why they are referred to as ubiquitious. However, they are very problematic to human health. Here is the list of health problems (PFAS) perfluorinated chemicals are linked with.

• reduction in immunity
• metabolic diseases like obesity & diabetes
• reduced vaccination response
• cardiovascular disease
• affect the growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children
• increased risk of allergies & asthma in young children
• lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant
• increase the chances of miscarriage 
• increase cholesterol levels
• low sperm count
• smaller penis size
• increase the risk of cancer like testicular & kidney cancers

Because these chemicals are ubiquitous and persistent, meaning they do not go away, it’s important to limit your consumption of them as often as you can. If you feel like you’ve been exposed to PFAS, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of Community Health Investigations has created this fact sheet to use when talking to your doctor.

9,000+ PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Are Impossible to Test For Directly But There’s a Solution

This part about the testing is very important to understand. Because there are over 9,000 of these PFAS “forever chemicals” and testing is only available for about 60+ or so, it’s impossible to test for them all directly. Any critique of this form of testing will rely on this fact. Chemical companies hide behind the fact that they can’t be tested directly as a way to deny their presence.

The fact that 98% of people in the United States have some of these chemicals (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, and PFNA) inside their bodies, in addition, coupled with the fact that close to 100% of samples of breastmilk show traces, it’s apparent how prevalent they really are. Therefore it’s not shocking to find them things like leggings.

So here’s our solution. Not being able to test for all available PFAS chemicals directly was a real big problem for the composting industry when ascertaining whether food packaging was safe to be certified as “compostable” for the gardens of consumers. So they devised a plan to test instead for fluorine, which is the chemical all PFAS chemicals have in common. Testing for fluorine and finding it at certain levels can indicate whether PFAS was “intentionally added” or not based on how much is found. But for our purposes, instead of making a judgment on whether we think it was “intentionally added” or not, we will just be reporting on the amounts that we found because we also care about contamination levels.

Because testing for fluorine is the only standard that is out there, we’ve adapted this to fabrics and now for leggings for our investigation.

Wear Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings PFAS “Forever Chemical” Lab Test Results

In August of 2021, an EPA-certified laboratory conducted tests of Total Fluorine by Oxygen Flask Combustion and determination of Total Fluorine and Fluoride by Ion-Selective Electrode on Wear Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings. The Level of Detection was 10 ppm.

Results From EPA Certified Lab

• Wear Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings — Non-detect total fluorine

So what does this mean? This means there is no detectable fluorine inside the leggings of the Wear Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings that were tested at our laboratory.

More About Wear Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings & Special Discount

Pact Organic Go-To Pocket Leggings are made from GOTS certified organic cotton & elastane and made in a Fair Trade Certified Factory. When you purchase these leggings, you’ll also make a difference in your environmental footprint. They are saving 42 gallons of water, using no inorganic pesticides and fertilizers, and adding little to no water pollution to the environment.

We reached out to Wear Pact Organic to get a discount on their products for you to replace them with and they have given us 20% off. Take 20% off Wear Pact Organic when you use “MAMAVATION20” at checkout. (First-time customer only & not stackable coupon during sales.)