Conventional (also known as traditional or commercial) cotton requires more herbicides and pesticeds than any other crop used in textile manufacturing. To bring this delicate plant to harvest, it is heavily sprayed 30 to 40 times a season - in extreme cases with pesticides so poisonous they gradually render fields barren. To create finished goods, fabrics are usually colored with toxic dyes and finished with formaldehyde.

Worldwide, conventional cotton farming uses only about 3% of the farmland but consumes approximately 25 percent of the chemical pesticides and fertilizers. In the United States alone, approximately 600 thousand tons of pesticides and chemical fertilizers are applied to cotton fields each season. To complicate matters, insects are quickly becoming resistant to recommended rates of pesticide application and ever increasing amounts are needed be effective.

A single t-shirt uses about 9 ounces of cotton, an average of 17 tsp of synthetic fertilizers and nearly a teaspoon of pesticides that are classified as among the most toxic by EPA

Cotton farming is the Unites States uses as much as 7kg/hectare of pesticides and 5kg/hectare of herbicides. This is almost 5 times as much as is used to grow corn. Pesticide use can be even higher in less wealthy, developing nations. Many of the pesticides use in cotton production (Metam Sodium, Aldicarb, Malathion and Endosulfan) have been linked to cancer and many other dangerous health conditions. Many of the agents used to spray cotton were originally developed in WWII as nerve gases.