Labels on almost 60 percent of garments claiming to have thermogenic properties are missing key information, the Consumers’ Foundation said yesterday.
Heat-generating clothes made with light high-tech fabric have been popular this winter, the foundation said, with some products claiming they can increase body temperature by up to 3oC.
“A product must have heat-generating properties for the term ‘thermogenic’ to be accurate,” foundation chairperson Joann Su (蘇錦霞) said. “From the results of our survey, 60 percent of such products do not contain thermogenic materials.”
Moreover, one of the products surveyed only had Japanese characters on the label, while some had “heat-generating fibers” printed on the tag, but lacked a clear explanation of the exact type of material, the foundation said.
The foundation surveyed 10 thermogenic garments from 10 popular retailers and Internet sellers in Taiwan last month and examined their instructions and labels.
Wang Chyuan-chyuan (王權泉), a professor at Chinese Culture University’s department of textile engineering, said that while natural fabrics, such as wool and silk, can help keep the body warm, they do not generate heat and most of the so-called heat-generating garments are made of synthetic fibers that only imitate wool’s features of moisture absorption and warmth retention.
“Acrylate fiber has some heat-generating features, but consumers can’t tell if [a product is] really made of such material,” Wang said, adding that the textiles need to be examined by technical experts to determine their components.
The foundation urged the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection to set up regulations for the certification and examination of such products.
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