Is it okay to let children wear clothes that cost only a dozen dollars?

It’s the season of changing seasons again. If you didn’t have kids before, you wouldn’t know that although children’s clothes are small, they are not cheaper than adult clothes! The key is that children grow up faster, so every time the season changes, it is a waste of money and mother’s time.

So some groups are buying very cheap clothes. Are these clothes that cost more than ten yuan each safe? Can children wear them? Let's first talk about the potential risks of cheap clothes: the first is that harmful substances are easily exceeded. The simplest and crudest way to judge whether a piece of clothing can be worn is not to touch it to see if it is not pure cotton, but to look at the clothing safety category. The national standard GB31701 divides infant and children's clothing into three categories based on indicators such as formaldehyde, plasticizers (that is, phthalates), and color fastness: Category A is infant textile products, suitable for babies under 3 years old; Category B is direct skin contact products, suitable for children over 3 years old; Category C is non-direct skin contact products, suitable for children over 3 years old, but it is best not to wear them close to the skin.

Formaldehyde is unavoidable in the production process of clothes, but unscrupulous merchants add excessive amounts of formaldehyde to make clothes stiffer. It is easy for babies to wear it to irritate their eyes and respiratory tract, causing allergies and rashes. Some clothes also have printed patterns on the surface of the fabric, and the prints may use paint containing plasticizers.

If the clothes are too cheap, the possibility of excessive plasticizers is higher. The key is that many clothes that are too cheap do not even have washing labels, and there is no indication of whether they are ABC, which means there is an even greater risk of excessive formaldehyde and phthalates. Therefore, choosing cheap clothes with safety category labels and no printed patterns will reduce the probability of stepping on thunder.

Secondly, the printing and dyeing process of cheap clothes may omit necessary processes. Take summer cotton T-shirts for example. Its dyeing process requires the use of reactive dyes, which will tightly bind to the hydroxyl groups in the clothes to achieve the dyeing effect. However, there are also hydroxyl groups in water, so after dyeing, part of the dye will react with water and will not be so tightly bound to the clothes, resulting in what we usually call floating color.

In order to save costs, some manufacturers often skip the step of washing the floating color, or the color fixing process is not done well, resulting in fading. The biggest harm of wearing the clothes without washing the floating color is that it may clog the skin pores and cause skin allergies in babies. It is normal for new clothes to fade when they are washed for the first time. However, if the clothes still fade after washing several times, it is probably because the floating color is not washed or there is a problem with the color fixing process. In this case, it is not recommended to let children wear them.

Finally, the raw materials of cheap clothes may be the scraps of large ready-made clothes. Some manufacturers make adult clothing and have some scraps left over. Children's clothes are not big anyway, so using scraps to make children's clothes is killing two birds with one stone, isn't it?

NO! NO! NO! Clothes made from scraps may have different materials for each batch, and the quality is really hard to control. For example, the cotton content of the previous batch of clothes was more than 95%, but this batch is only 80%, but the tags of the same clothes are the same. It is difficult to see the problem just from the tag! These unqualified fabrics are easy to pilling, splitting, and not durable. Of course, this only affects the appearance, and it is not harmful to the body. Some unscrupulous merchants use recycled cotton as raw materials, which are all discarded and unsterilized scraps, and safety and hygiene are not guaranteed.

After all this, is there no cheap and comfortable clothes? No. Rong Ge’s trick is to find the big brands’ clothing that are out of stock or clearance, buy down jackets in summer and small T-shirts in winter, and you may be able to find good clothes for just a dozen or dozens of yuan.

This method is safe and saves money, but it takes more time! If you want to be lazy and save money, you can ask relatives, friends and colleagues for some good quality old clothes!