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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

Things like fire extinguishing foam are probably some unavoidable evil. But realistically how many of us are buying rainproof stuff when all we needed was something water-resistant?

Recently I was looking for a tweed winter jacket only to realize that those are now also being treated with water resistant coatings!

Most use-cases people are out in the rain for stretches of 20min and run inside for shelter shortly after. Unless you work outdors or are on a day long hike/cycle there is no need to have this much 100% waterproof stuff. Waxed/greased materials or just wool do a good enough job for most mortals and have served us well for thousands of years.

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I regularly bike in the rain for 30 minutes or more. My gear is all nylon with a non-PFOA wax coating. It doesn't perform as well, and my jacket will get saturated after about 45 minutes. I deal with that by wearing something under the jacket (usually a fleece). Absolutely worst case, the fleece gets slightly damp but I am still perfectly comfortable for many hours.

The only other issue I see is that I have to reapply the coating about once a year, or after I machine-wash the jacket.

Overall these are very minor inconveniences. I wonder if anyone really needs the performance gains of these chemicals - you only see the advantage in really bad weather conditions over long periods of time. How many people are doing day-long hikes in pouring rain?

It’s just laziness. People don’t want to have to reapply stuff. They want it to be waterproof until they throw it out and buy another.

This is too dismissive.

How many times have you seen ads for Gore-Tex anything? How many waxed canvas coats are you able to find in normal outdoor shops or in normal clothing retailers?

There is a lot of money in outdoor gear and it is all being spent on pushing high tech solutions.

You basically have to go out of your way to find some grandpa shop or 'out of fashion' clothing (mostly shops selling hunting clothing/gear) to find reasonable alternatives.

I think it's more that people lack the skill and time to reapply such coatings and there are no commercial services that do so.

Pearl Izumi rain pants work great for me for heavy rain. I never got a proper upper cover just a hoody jacket cover thing that doesn't do as good a job of keeping water out as the pants. I wear a coat sometimes and needed something to pull over a coat. The rain pants pull over existing pants very readily, the top has a wider variation in thickness I need to cover so I never got a proper rain jacket from Pearl Izumi which is more on the tight end of a fit.

Yeah they probably should just start banning frivolous use completely everywhere there are alternatives

I wonder how harmful are waterproofing sprays like this: https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/water-repellent-re-activator-s... they are incredibly effective in keeping my shoes dry but seeing people using it on national park trailheads makes me a little nervous.

They’re terrible, and as bad as you think. Those are PFCs in a can.

Look for Nikwax brand, which makes waterproofing products that are all PFC-free

I recently bought kids rain boots, just normal vulcanized rubber which is itself water proof.

The lady at the counter asked if I wanted a water repellent coating (PFC) on it for extra money. They are exposing toddlers to this crap for literally no benefit.

The pace at which we allow chemistry innovation to permiate consumer markets needs to be curbed.

> Waxed/greased materials or just wool do a good enough job for most mortals and have served us well for thousands of years.

Yes, but they're more expensive to manufacture. Capitalism is looking to min/max these things, as are consumers since people can't afford wool / waxed materials anymore - also because they can't find them anymore, except at specialist and smaller venues.

We tried shopping for new winter coats the other day, most of what we found was plastic or some cotton. The more expensive stuff we found was more polyester, but at 6x the price. There was no shop (on the high street) that sold anything woolen or cotton.

Uniqlo has a well-priced 100% wool coat. https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/products/E449890-000/00

J Crew as well, when it’s on sale. https://www.jcrew.com/p/mens/categories/clothing/coats-and-j...

I sympathize, though, because in my quest to help you I checked two or three other places briefly (Macys, Everlane) and the offerings I found first all were wool blends

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