Impregnation

PFC indicates perfluorinated and polyfluorinated chemicals and summarises about 8,000 known substances. All PFCs have in common that they consists of carbon chains of different lengths in which hydrogen atoms have been replaced by fluorine. These substances do not occur in nature. To this very day, the majority of waterproofing agents use fluorocarbons, which are harmful to our health and the environment. Waterproofing releases these substances into the environment, where they accumulate as they are not biodegradable by nature or the human organism. Environmental protection agencies have been drawing attention to this danger for years and were able to persuade some textile suppliers to ban fluorocarbon from their production processes as part of the Detox Campaign. Apart from Colltex, most climbing-skin manufacturers continue to treat ski skins with PFCs though. For the reasons listed below, Colltex considers this quite unnecessary: - **Already after the first ski tour, the waterproofing mixes with the snow and no longer sticks to the ski skin due to mechanical wear and tear.** - **It makes more sense to treat ski skins with an environmentally harmless wax or waterproofi ng spray.** - **Even with a PFC-treated ski skin, the pile will have to be regularly cared for with a waterproofing spray.**