So many people I know (including myself in the past), have lived under the assumption that you should be able to wear clothes that you just bought from the store without worry. Despite the dark wash on jeans changing the color of your underwear or a brightly pigmented shirt causing your bra to turn into an off-pinkish shade, many women and men still buy clothes and wear them when they get home. I must confess that I'm sometimes that person, guilty of assuming clothes I've just bought are safe to wear.
I was on Facebook last night and was reading one of those reblogged a gillion times news stories about a woman contracting parasites from wearing clothes that she had just bought but not washed. Now, I'm a realistic person...I realize that it may not actually have been the clothes that gave her parasites but it may have been something else but nonetheless, doing some research on how safe just bought store clothes are is quite sobering...
Now if you think about it, there are chemicals not just from the dyes in our clothes and fabrics but there are also chemicals in the towels and sheets we purchase (like formaldehyde and urea resin) which the manufacturer claims they put on the fabric to "protect it from stains, keep it wrinkle free, etc.". To be honest though, I always wash my sheets and towels before using because I can't stand the texture of the fabric from those items just out of box or off the shelf. I need to wash it to get it softer and to give it the smell I prefer when I lay my head on my pillow.
Clothing though.. was a different story. I often welcomed that "new clothes" smell and would wear items the day I purchased it. I never gave much thought to the person or numerous people that had possibly tried on that very same shirt, dress, jeans, bra, bathing suit, whatever before I had and what diseases or bad hygiene they may have had. Yuck... Sometimes I'd come home and wash clothes because it helps keep the colors from fading and the clothes from shrinking if you wash before wear but that occurred maybe 50 percent of the time. If you read the tags on your new clothes, most of them say "wash before wearing". There's a reason for that. How do you know that a person who has fungal problems hasn't just tried on that very same neon pink darling top you just grabbed off the rack? How do you know that the bathing suit you're about to try on hasn't been tried on by someone who didn't properly clean themselves after going to the bathroom? Scary thoughts that can make your head spin.
As a parent, this is especially concerning because you don't want anything harmful going on your child. When my son was a baby I washed literally E V E R Y T H I N G he put on meticulously because I wanted to make sure it didn't irritate his skin. As he's grown older and is nearly a tween, I've gotten rather lax in that capacity... up till now that is... It is truly truly frightening to consider what germs, chemicals, diseases may be on the fabric of the clothes you purchased off the rack. You also shouldn't assume that because you shopped at a "high end" retailer that the clothes are cleaner because I know quite a few "rich people" with disgustingly bad hygiene.
Bottom line, if you are purchasing any clothes or other fabric items that you are going to wear/dry yourself with/sleep in, WASH IT FIRST! Better to be safe than sorry. I have an image of the parasite ridden woman burned forever in my brain and will not be sharing it here because I wouldn't want to expose any of you to that. Yuck.
Here is an article from Good Morning America about this very topic.