New clothes that smell of paraffin

Thanks POGS. Just caught up with your helpful reply!

The smell is formaldehyde used to stop clothes imported in bulk in containers from going mouldy in transit. They are mostly produced by sweatshop labourers in the Far East and the Phillipines. I was in Asda once when I overheard two women saying how marvellously cheap kids clothes were there. " Yes" I butted in rudely, "but Asda is making huge profits on the backs of slave workers in Chinese factories." If looks could have killed...

I purchased a blouse from an ebay seller and when it arrived it stank of smoke,I complained to the seller to be promised it came from a non-smoking household and to be fair the smell went when washed I was told that the grey plastic bag it was posted in was the cause and the material of the blouse absorbed the odour from the bag,apparently it is a well known problem in ebay land.

Talking about smells. My family think I'm a bit silly when I say Penguins (since in plastic wrappers) have a plastic taste and I cannot taste the biscuit any more.

I hate the smell when you walk into a charity shop. The only smell problem I've had is with cottons from India and black jeans. I wonder if the shipping company uses insecticide? With jeans it's just the dye. Even I don't use it but what about that product f*****ze?

I wash my clothes inside out to cut down the bobbling and to prevent bits of fluff ending up stuck on to dark fabrics. I never knew that it preserved the colour. On the other hand, if you dry clothes outside, it would probably reduce fading in the sun.

I don't know either mumof but strangely enough it does!
Possibly takes less of a battering being sloshed around the washing machine drum!

Why should washing jeans inside out preserve the colour? Serious question

I was surprised Neversaydie that you didn't already wash your jeans inside out !! I was brought up to wash jeans & dark clothing inside out as it preserves the colour.

Can't say I've noticed a smell on clothes & I have a good sense of smell although now I rarely buy "cheap" clothes, Jeans are always M & S as are most of my Jumpers, Blouses the same. I find cheaper clothes often don't fit well & being a "larger lady" it's also more difficult to find anything

www.home-ec101.com/formaldehyde-its-not-just-for-embalming-anymore/

Tells you what can cause the smell and what to 'try' to get rid of it.

A friend who worked in the fashion industry told me that cheap dyes are one of the major cost savings in cheap clothes. These often fade quickly or are a slightly odd colour. The smell would fit with this theory.

I'm paranoid now, I've got zero sense of smell and I am now panicking about whether my clothes stink!!

Edinburgh Woollen Mill used to stock baggy jumpers which I used to buy when I was much more corpulent than I am now, which were, apparently, made from recycled black plastic bags. These bags tend to smell like coal sacks themselves, and many man made fibres are by-products of fossil fuels, so I imagine the paraffin 'scent' of 'value' clothes is built in. Personally I quite like the coal-sack fragrance, and find the paraffin variant to be vastly inferior

The smell of some plastic makes me heave...
Why is it cheap jeans lose their dye much faster than ?I wear Sainsburys Tu jeans for every day and have learnt to wash inside out, by hand in cool water (bit of a fafg as they are so cheap)My jeans-of-choice for best'are Not Your Daughters (they cost a fortune ,but last for years)They don't fade anywhere near as quickly but they don't smell of preservative either ...

I don't think we know the half of it about clothes manufacturing , no matter what is said on the label!!& I read a book about ethical shopping , very disturbing , my dear friend who always insists on buying top brands & pure cotton , would not believe me when I told her how so many of these items are produced & she refused to read it. Many families in third world countries need this work to survive even at the cost to their health .Manufactures make it very difficult for us find out much about the production chain,I don't know what the answer is really, but the smell referred to could be a clue that all is not what it seems!!

Haven't noticed the smell, but hubby wears black jeans from M&S. The dye comes out on the armchair where his sits. At first I thought it was dirt. The pale yellow chair is ruined.

The only item that had a pong (bought recently and was not cheap) was a crocheted silk scarf. Hand washed it, dried it, and it was fine.Bought one for a friend's birthday from same place, warned her that she would have to wash it ( I was there when she opened the present) and Lo and behold, it had no odour at all!
Mine had a definite whiff of paraffin about it.

Oh dear - having no sense of smell now I wouldn't know if anything I've bought smells ! Many years ago we bought an office chair from a local shop - when they delivered it it absolutely stank of pig s* - thought it was the wrapping but was worse when we took it off! Eventually we had to complain and the owner came to collect it - his instant recoil as he approached it confirmed we weren't imagining it! We never did find out what it was.

Moths hate the smell apparently

It's plastic carriers that I find offensive, so many of the cheap ones smell as if they've been in a fire. Horrible.

It's sometimes clothes made of silk that I find smell awful. But as I haven't bought silk for a long time, maybe it is'nt a problem now.

Some dyes smell awful. I find the ink used in some glossy magazine particularly repulsive.

Yes I've been down the repeated washing & soaking route, but jeans seem particularly resistant. I've been told it's to discourage insect investation in transit. I am just keeping the latest pair as they are so comfy /well fitting & persisting with the washing in hopes :-)

I've heard it's the dye used that smells so odd, especially the black.

I've just thrown out a pair of black jeans from Lidl for that very reason.
They cost £7.99 and after at least 5 washes, being soaked, being left on the line outside overnight, they still stank.
Oh and in spite of me being a size 10/12, I bought the size 14 and they were uncomfortably tight.

Lesson learned! Buy cheap, buy twice