I have just bought a Howies t-shirt from good old eBay. The seller had thoughtfully copied the following extract from the Howies website. It makes quite shocking reading:

100% cotton. 73% true

The average 100% cotton T-shirt contains only 73% cotton. The rest is
made up of chemicals and resins that were used to grow and make it.
Yet, we all think cotton is one of the most natural things around. The
truth is, it’s not as nice as we’d all like to think.

Indeed, cotton is the world’s most sprayed crop. It uses over a quarter
of all insecticides used today (see list below). The way they grow it
isn’t good for the farmer’s health, the water table’s health, the
factory worker’s health, the river’s health and eventually the sea’s
health.

That’s why we use organic cotton. It costs us 30% more than normal
cotton. It means our products cost a little more, but we think it’s
worth it. After all, you wear your T-shirt next to your skin for 10
hours a day. (Just think how Nicorettes work).

The average cotton crop is sprayed 8-10 times a season. Indeed, it
takes 17 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers to raise the 9 ounces of
cotton needed to make a T-shirt.

The most common pesticides used are: Chlorphynfos (causes brain and
foetal damage, impotence and sterility), Cyanazine (causes birth
defects and cancer), Dicofol (causes cancer, reproductive damage and
tumours), Ethephon (causes mutations) Fluometuron (causes blood and
spleen disorders), Metam Sodium (causes birth defects, foetal damage,
mutation), Methyl Parathion (causes birth defects, foetal damage,
reproductive damage and destroys immune system), MSMA (causes tumours)

Nailed (causes cancer, reproductive damage and tumours), Profenofos
(causes eye damage and skin irritation), Prometryn (causes bone morrow,
kidney, liver and testicular damage), Propargite (causes cancer, foetal
and eye damage, mutation and tumours), Sodium Chlorate (causes kidney
damage), Tribufos (causes cancer and tumours), and Trifluralin (causes
cancer, foetal damage and mutation).

In America last year, farmers applied 53 million pounds of toxic
pesticides to cotton fields. Out of the world’s total insecticide
usage, 25% is used just to farm cotton.

And, if that isn’t enough, once the cotton has been grown it is dyed
using toxic dyes. Then, to prevent it from creasing, it is finished
with formaldehyde. Common sense says that can’t be right. Go organic.