Chemically pure hydrocarbon polymers may be inert and generally nonreactive, however pure polymers like nylon or polyester are virtually useless.
Plastics only become useful when they're mixed with a vast array of plasticizers, conditioners, chain extenders and other industrial chemicals.
And those chemicals absolutely leach out of the materials we laypeople refer to as 'plastics', even before you consider environmental factors that cause the materials to decay.
I'm not an expert or a chemist, but I have the impression that the leaching of chemicals from plastics should generally be in proportion to how soft and flexible they are. The first thing that comes to mind as full of "squishy" plastics is a typical automobile today, hence the "new car smell". People are also conditioned to think that more soft plastics means higher quality.
But clothes and other things that don't smell and aren't squeezable would seem on the face of it to be unlikely hazards. We've got built in chemoreceptors, so why be paranoid as though we didn't?
Are you aware of or concerned about PVC piping widely used for plumbing? Do you know of any practical plans for eliminating it?
Chemically pure hydrocarbon polymers may be inert and generally nonreactive, however pure polymers like nylon or polyester are virtually useless.
Plastics only become useful when they're mixed with a vast array of plasticizers, conditioners, chain extenders and other industrial chemicals.
And those chemicals absolutely leach out of the materials we laypeople refer to as 'plastics', even before you consider environmental factors that cause the materials to decay.