I'll start with the thing most articles on this topic won't say: nobody has published a study that tested fight shorts, specifically, for PFAS. Not ours, not anyone else's. If you came here for a lab result on a named pair of MMA shorts, it does not exist yet.
That gap is exactly why this is worth writing carefully. The honest answer to "are there PFAS in fight shorts" is built from what we do know about the category, not from a test that hasn't been run.
What PFAS are, and why they end up in clothing
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they barely break down. In textiles they earn their keep as finishes: the coatings that make fabric shrug off water, resist stains, and wick in a particular way.
The health record is the part that moved this out of the trade press. The World Health Organization's cancer agency classified PFOA, one of the most-studied PFAS, as carcinogenic to humans.1 Most of that evidence comes from drinking water, blood serum, and occupational exposure rather than from clothing, so treated apparel is best understood as one avoidable contributor to your total load, not the single cause of a disease. Roughly a third of global PFAS production goes to textiles, which is enough volume to take seriously.
What the testing has actually found
Here is where I have to be precise, because this is the claim that gets stretched.
There is no fight-shorts dataset, but there is activewear testing. An investigation by Mamavation with Environmental Health News sent 32 pairs of activewear, mostly leggings and yoga pants, to an EPA-certified lab and tested them for organic fluorine, which is an indicator of PFAS. Roughly 1 in 4 showed detectable fluorine, ranging from 10 to 284 parts per million. The other 75 percent showed none.2
Read that the way I read it. It is women's leggings, not men's fight shorts, so it is a proxy for the category, not a measurement of your gear. Organic fluorine is an indicator, not a full PFAS identification. And the headline finding cuts both ways: a quarter had detectable fluorine, but most did not. The takeaway is not "all synthetic activewear is drenched in PFAS." It is "PFAS show up often enough in this category that you cannot assume any treated synthetic garment is clean, and you usually have no way to check."
The law is already moving
If you want a signal that this is real and not marketing, look at regulation rather than brands.
As of January 1, 2025, California's AB 1817 prohibits the sale of new textile articles containing regulated PFAS, defined as 100 parts per million or more of total organic fluorine, with the threshold dropping to 50 parts per million in 2027.3 Apparel is squarely in scope. When a state writes a hard limit into law and then schedules it to get stricter, that is a regulator concluding the exposure was worth ending. The whole industry is now being pulled off PFAS finishes whether it wanted to be or not.
First drop. 500 units. Late 2026.
Access before the public.
What about the other fight brands?
People ask me directly whether the big-name fight brands' shorts contain PFAS. I'm not going to answer a question I can't back with data, and neither should anyone else.
What I can say is factual and narrow: as of writing, I am not aware of any of the major fight brands publishing a PFAS-free certification for their shorts. That is not an accusation that their gear contains PFAS. It means the information isn't disclosed, so a buyer is left to assume. The category default for performance synthetics is treated fabric, and absence of disclosure is not the same as absence of PFAS. That uncertainty is the actual problem, and it is the thing a natural-fiber build removes at the source.
How to avoid PFAS in clothing
Practical, in rough order of how much it does for you:
- Start from untreated natural fiber. Organic cotton, Tencel lyocell, merino wool, and linen are not given PFAS finishes in the first place. Nothing to spray means nothing to avoid.
- Be skeptical of "water-resistant," "stain-resistant," and "DWR" labels on everyday clothing. Those properties are the most common reason a PFAS finish gets applied.
- Look for an explicit PFAS-free statement. After AB 1817, compliant brands have a reason to say so plainly. Vague "clean" language is not the same thing.
- For the gear you already own, washing won't remove an embedded finish, so prioritize replacing the pieces with the longest skin contact: liners, shorts, base layers.
Where that leaves fight shorts
The reason we build from organic cotton, Tencel, and a merino liner is the boring one: a fabric that was never treated cannot carry a finish you have to test for later. No PFAS finish is applied anywhere in the build, because these materials don't use one. You can read the full material breakdown, see how the fabric question connects to microplastics and hormones in is wearing polyester bad for you, or look at the shorts directly.
I would rather tell you "this was never treated" than "we tested it and it came back low." The first one is a design decision. The second is a hope.