To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick--and How We Can Fight Back

Third, the industry maintains, too little of these amines would get into our bodies from fabric to cause us any harm. It’s not like you’re eating your clothing, an industry expert told me. But if these azo disperse dyes are present in house dust—as these latest tests were showing—we are eating our clothing. This toxic azo dust isn’t staying put on

Jäger was deeply concerned about aniline dyes. “The assertion that aniline dyes are only injurious when they contain arsenic, is entirely erroneous; they are chiefly noxious because of their volatility,” he wrote. In other words, they can easily come off the fabric as fumes or in sweat. In 1880, he published the first of several booklets on the top

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.

Jaclyn realized there could be hundreds or even thousands more triggers out there that she didn’t know about. And unlike food, beauty products, or cleaning products, clothing doesn’t come with an ingredient list. Even with her insider’s knowledge of the industry and how clothes are made, Jaclyn felt as if there was nothing she could do to avoid tho

No reputable sources seemed to have spotted this story, of what can be put on the cotton—and, for that matter, polyester, nylon, wool, and viscose—many steps after it has been harvested and woven.

“Young children crawl around on the floor a lot, they put their hands in their mouths, and they ingest dust at up to twenty times the amount that an adult would ingest. Children still have developing organs and developing immune systems,” Overdahl told me. Stapleton was infuriated by the results. “We found these in baby pajamas. There could be a go

Today, thanks to synthetic mauve dye, fossil fuels are the basis for an infinite catalog of textile finishes, pesticides, detergents, pharmaceuticals, glues, plastics, faux leathers, synthetic fabrics, inks, and more. Who would have guessed that 150 years after Perkin peered at his purple fabric, chemistry’s core role in fashion would be almost ent

Performance attributes such as water repellency, stain repellency, wrinkle resistance, and easy-care fabrics are almost always achieved through toxic chemicals such as PFAS and coatings that can break down and come off the clothing into your house dust or onto your skin.

Because the best way to ensure that a product doesn’t have a toxic substance on it is to not use it during production in the first place.