To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick--and How We Can Fight Back
Such frightful substances would arrive centuries later, when fashion ushered in a new age of powerful fossil-fuel chemistry.
Alden Wicker • To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick--and How We Can Fight Back
Swan put the blame squarely on “the ubiquity of insidiously harmful chemicals in the modern world” and especially “chemicals that interfere with our body’s natural hormones.” These are endocrine-disrupting chemicals. And they include a lot of fashion’s favorite finishes and ingredients: lead, mercury, arsenic, phthalates, APEOs, PFAS, and bisphenol
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Fashion products have some of the most complicated and multilayered chemical profiles of any product you or I can buy—without a license, anyway. Multiple chemical substances are used to manufacture, process, weave, dye, finish, and assemble clothing and accessories. Each step in this daisy chain can leave a residue, either intentionally or unintent
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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
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Because of the fertility and ecological crises caused by hormone-disrupting chemicals, and the health effects of even low doses, we need a total ban of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in consumer products, including on textile products and fashion accessories. That includes lead, mercury, arsenic, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and its cousins BPS an
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All these uniforms had a few things in common. They boasted water and stain repellency. They were anti-wrinkle, antifungal, and anti-odor and came in the bright, saturated colors of the airlines. In other words, they contained layer upon layer of nearly every newfangled chemical process on the market. And all those finishes and dyes seem to have ma
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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
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It published a list of chemicals that members agree not to use, called a manufacturing restricted substance list, or MRSL.
Alden Wicker • To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick--and How We Can Fight Back
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.