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

When a new uniform was introduced by Alaska Airlines, some of the flight attendants started falling sick after wearing the uniform — symptoms included hives, brain fog, vomiting, and an inability to stay around strong odour.

Alaska Airlines produced reports from various testing agencies saying that there was nothing wrong with their uniforms. Further, they went out of their way to stop the flight attendants from using alternate ones procured from other stores. At the same time, the flight attendants who suffered from symptoms were pronounced hyper-sensitive.

This sent the author down the garment supply chain looking for answers to the question — Can our garments hurt us? What comes out of the investigation is not pretty.

First of all unlike the food you consume, your garments come with no ingredient list. There is no way for us to know what a garment has been coloured with or treated with, this is especially true of performance fabrics that claim to be dirt-resistant, water-resistant, fungus-resistant, colour-fast, etc.

Underlying all of these properties are chemicals that are often carcinogenic and unsafe for humans. The chemicals found in clothes include lead, arsenic, mercury, formaldehyde, and benzene, all concocted into formulae that even those well-trained in chemistry would struggle to recite.

A lot of these materials generously use PFAS or Poly-Flourinated Substances which are known as forever chemicals since it can take millennia for them to break down.

The chemicals used are even worse when it comes to synthetic fabrics. Have you ever tried painting on plastic? Natural dyes will not stick to polyester and hence stronger chemicals are used. There is a method called Dope Dying that is safer but requires larger orders because the fibre itself is dyed a certain colour. In the world of Shein and Zara where designs change by the week, there is no room for large production runs.

These chemicals are wreaking havoc on the environment and ecosystems in India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and many more places.

What these chemicals do to the human body is an even bigger problem.

Many of these chemicals are responsible for triggering auto-immune diseases. These can become lifelong ailments that people have to live with just because they bought the wrong t-shirt.

Many of these chemicals can get absorbed into our bodies through the skin. They can also find a way to our lungs. Many of these are carcinogenic and have been shown to cause infertility. There is a case study in the book of a woman who was unable to get pregnant even after IVF but was able to conceive once she changed out her wardrobe.

At the other end of the spectrum are skin-related diseases such as psoriasis, skin irritation, allergies, etc.

What is worse is that there are no conclusive random trial tests done that prove this and hence many doctors would reject that possibility out of hand. Many of the airline staff from Alaskan and American Airlines ended up with the psychiatrists for having complained that their clothes were causing their diseases.

There are testing bodies such as OkoeTex and GOT that provide testing and certifications to clothing brands but even they test for a small list of substances. In the case of PFAS for instance, they test for 48 molecules whereas there are over 12,000 variants that exist. Manufacturers are therefore incentivised to use variants they know for a fact would not be tested for.

The crux of the problem is that clothing manufacturers have no reason to clean up their production methods so long as brands are willing to switch factories for a savings of a single penny per item. Brands wish to keep all of the margins and expect products delivered at the lowest cost possible.

The author takes a trip to Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, India which is one of the largest production bases in the world. The condition of the labourers working in these factories is far worse than those wearing the clothes. Most of them have skin diseases that they do not even understand. These people are subject to the chemicals every single day.

Nobody in any corner of the world is immune to the scourge of chemicals being unleashed by the fashion industry. If you think laws in your country protect you, think again.

Many of the clothing shipments arrive in the form of small parcels thanks to a just-in-time supply chain and constantly updating designs. There is no way to inspect all of these packages at an individual level and maintain the 24–48 hour delivery promises that most companies make today. No matter which country you live in, clothes with many of these chemicals pass through the borders and land up in the stores or perhaps even directly at your doorstep.

The EU has introduced laws that forbid the use of certain chemicals and is perhaps the only government anywhere in the world that has taken any steps towards curbing this menace.

The author ends the book on a depressing note that the Alaska Airlines crew have still not got the new clothes that they had been promised in 2020 and many who suffered because of the new uniform which is almost 10% of the staff have been either required to soldier through with their diseases or quit the job completely.

As long as the forces of capitalism are aligned with just reducing costs without fear of consequences, our clothing will continue to pose grave threats to our health.

On the upside, mankind will slowly lose its ability to reproduce, more people will die of auto-immune diseases and as a result, climate change will be solved!