The element chromium was discovered in 1797 by the French chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin, and it almost immediately upended the centuries-old process of preparing leather for commercial use. By the mid-1800s, manufacturers had discovered that using chrome salts instead of traditional tannic substances sped up the tanning process to just a day,

It occurred to me that, while beauty and cleaning products and packaged foods come with an ingredient list, fashion does not. Like many, I assumed that meant there wasn’t much on or in clothing fabric that wasn’t the fabric itself. Surely, if there was something to be worried about, the government would be on it. I mean, how complex could a pair of

Chronic chromium VI poisoning, according to the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, presents itself most often as respiratory ailments: sinusitis, nasal septum perforation (holes in the cartilaginous wall between the nostrils), bronchitis, asthma, rhinitis, and lung cancer.

fend for themselves against arsenic fashion’s ravages, as if it were a disease or God’s will, and not a man-made substance filling the coffers of the business elite.

Researchers are even discovering that microfibers from natural textiles like cotton aren’t breaking down as quickly as we thought when they hit waterways, potentially because they are so thoroughly coated in chemicals and polymers.

I wanted to speak to garment workers whose exposure to fashion chemistry isn’t through drinking water or contaminated vegetables but is somewhat similar to ours: touching the clothing fresh from the dye units, breathing in the fibers that are coated with chemicals.

No. What I was learning is that, especially when it comes to chemistry, we’re all connected. And I mean that literally, not in a woo-woo way. What goes in at the front end at these wet processing facilities not only gets dumped out the back of dyehouses, it can end up in our closets, on our skin, and in our own washing machines.

It’s not just workers who are exposed to vinyl chloride, though. PVC plastic off-gasses—breathes out into the surrounding air—vinyl chloride over its entire lifetime. But the fumes are worse when it’s new. In fact, part of that seductive “new car smell” is vinyl chloride fumes.

Cradle to Cradle, which is all about clothing recyclability and biodegradability (it’s hard to do either if something’s got a toxic finish);