What’s in it for me? Discover how chemical-laced textiles are poisoning our bodies.
In 2011, a flight attendant at Alaska Airlines, who wishes to remain unnamed, was issued a new uniform. A seemingly innocuous event – but in reality, a deadly one. After being obligated to wear the uniform, the attendant – along with many of her coworkers – developed heart and liver damage. Her husband left her. And she was forced to move out to the desert, where the dry heat would help soothe her ailing body.
She’s not alone. Hundreds of Alaska Airlines attendants fell ill in 2011 with rashes, thyroid issues, hair loss, extreme fatigue, and other problems – all after being issued their new uniforms.
Airline attendants may have been the first to recognize that they were being poisoned by their clothing. But are they the only ones? Or might we all unknowingly be wearing toxic clothing day to day? What sinister chemicals lurk within our favorite jeans, dresses, and athletic pants?
This eye-opening Blink reveals the untold environmental and health impacts behind our clothing's chemical curtain. The good news is that it ultimately empowers consumers with knowledge to make informed choices and compel brands toward transparency. Read on to find out how.
Canaries in the coal mine
Mary started coughing one day. She was working as a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines and had just been issued a new uniform. At first, she dismissed her colleagues' complaints about the uniforms causing rashes and other problems. She figured they probably just hated change and wanted something to complain about. But before long, Mary also started to develop burning rashes, while her coworker, John, ended up in the ER with severely compromised breathing.
What neither Mary, nor John, nor any of the other flight attendants knew at the time was that the new outfits, while stylish, contained a toxic mixture of flame retardants and Teflon coatings.
When attendants’ issues became too prevalent to ignore, the airline claimed that the uniforms had been accidentally contaminated by tributyl phosphate, or TBP, an ingredient used in hydraulic fluid. To remedy this, all Alaska did was offer attendants $135 so they could get their uniforms dry cleaned. Never mind that dry cleaning wouldn’t actually get rid of the TBP.
Later, it came out that the truth was rather different from the official story. The TBP had in fact been intentionally added to the uniforms. And it was far from an isolated problem. TBP, it turns out, is often used as a wetting agent and solvent in textile manufacturing. And, as with most chemicals used in textile manufacturing, there’s no official limit on how much TBP can be present on a piece of clothing.
In spite of her worsening condition, Mary continued to wear the uniform. Migraines, stuttering, and memory loss became regular parts of her life. She developed a rash on her chest; her eyes grew red and crusty. And John, for his part, ended up in the ER again, covered with bloody, oozing lesions from his upper back to his ears. Alaska denied that these conditions could have been work-related. Anyone claiming to be experiencing issues from their uniform just had an “individual sensitivity.”
Years passed. During that time, until around 2017, thousands of attendants across many major airlines, including American, Southwest, and Delta, reported acute issues from toxic attire. In every case, little to nothing was done.
What can we learn from these cases? Quite a bit, it turns out. That’s because airline attendants are about as close to a controlled population as you can get. They wear the same uniform pieces every day, and when there’s a change, everyone adopts it at the same time. Since they spend lots of time in tight quarters, their exposure to toxic chemicals in their uniforms can be quite high.
In the general population, exposure levels probably aren’t as high, and reactions are much harder to track. Your wardrobe might contain dozens of items, none of which you wear every single day. So if you’re having medical or psychological problems, how can you know if they are being caused by your underwear, your sweater, or your leggings?
That’s not to say there aren’t convincing anecdotes that come from the general population. Nurse Karly Hiser, for example, noticed her eldest son’s eczema started getting worse when he was two or three years old. She switched her family to fragrance-free soaps and nontoxic cleaning products, but nothing seemed to help. It was only when she desperately sewed him some homemade, organic cotton underwear that her son found some relief.
Karly’s case leads to another concerning point: the effects of toxic fashion on children. Children are potentially even more vulnerable than adults to the chemicals on clothes. Why? Because they spend more time crawling on the ground, breathing in dust and sticking their hands in their mouths.
Children and adults aren’t licking their clothes, of course. But when clothes touch skin, chemicals can rub off onto it. And then dead skin cells – now contaminated with chemicals – enter the air as dust particles, which we then breathe in – or, in the case of a child, lick off of our hands.
How many of us might be breathing in toxic chemicals from the dust in our homes right this very moment?
Fashion’s toxic history
Woven into the fabric of fashion’s glamorous history is a dark thread of toxic tales.
In the 1500s and 1600s, Renaissance nobility were rumored to lace gloves and other clothing with poison to kill off their enemies. And Queen Elizabeth I’s death is suspected to have been related to heavy metal poisoning, built up over a lifetime of wearing mercury-filled makeup.
Later on, in the 1800s, mercury was a ubiquitous substance in hat-making workshops. This caused hatmakers to suffer chronic convulsions, shakes, and paralysis. By the 1900s, arsenic had made its way into trendy green floral headpieces and dresses, poisoning both makers and buyers.
Toxic threats are not necessarily less present today, though they’re less obvious. Just look at old glove-making towns like New York's Gloversville. There, chromium and other chemicals are still soaked into the water and soil. Almost thirty sites around Gloversville are known to be toxic. Are these chemicals at the roots of local health problems? Many residents suffer from chronic issues, including various cancers, respiratory problems, mental health conditions, and fertility issues.
Unfortunately, the answer is far from a simple “yes” or “no.” With so many businesses dumping waste for decades, no single corporation or chemical can be implicated.
And, of course, corporations will do a lot to avoid being implicated. Consider Polyvinyl Chloride, commonly known as PVC, which is now a popular alternative to animal leather. In the late 1950s, scientists were already concerned by experiments showing that rabbits got cancer when exposed to vinyl chloride, one of the substances PVC is derived from. But PVC industry executives ignored the warnings. They also managed to cover up the fact that PVC plant workers were dying in droves from a rare liver cancer. The truth was only exposed in the 1970s when five PVC plant workers died at a Louisville, Kentucky factory. Regulations were put in place to limit exposure to vinyl chloride in PVC factories. But that might not even matter, since a 1979 review found that there is no safe level of vinyl chloride exposure at all.
So today we have vegan alternatives to chemical-laden leather and bright synthetic dyes instead of arsenic green. But countless chemicals still lurk within our clothing. And by and large, the global regulatory system on clothing is reactive, only banning substances after definitive, decades-long studies. By then, of course, the damage is already done.
The costs of toxic fashion
Could your favorite cozy sweater be the reason you and your partner are having trouble getting pregnant? Now, that might sound like a wild conclusion to draw – but don’t dismiss it just yet.
In Western countries especially, though not exclusively, more and more couples are struggling to conceive. In 2020, the global market for assisted reproduction was estimated at $2.3 billion and rapidly growing. And between 2004 and 2011 In the US, there was a 37 percent increase in the number of women seeking fertility treatment due to diminished ovarian reserves – meaning a low egg count for IVF. Most dramatically, the sharpest fertility declines were seen in younger women in their 20s and 30s, not older ones.
Sperm counts have also plummeted by more than 50 percent in the previous forty years – mostly in the West, but some data indicates the trend is global. One doctor even estimates that 41 percent of men could be infertile by 2050 – despite the fact that, on average, men are exercising more while smoking and drinking less.
Some scientists link these troubling issues to the ubiquitous presence of chemicals in fashion production that disrupt the endocrine system. This is the body’s hormonal messenger network, and it plays a big role in fertility. The chemicals in fashion that can affect it include polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS for short, and phthalates, often called ‘plasticizers’. Even infinitesimal amounts of these chemicals absorbed during pregnancy can cause damage, permanently altering developing embryos. We’re talking parts per billion.
If you’re not a person trying to conceive, don’t consider yourself off the hook just yet. The human endocrine system is involved in far more than just fertility – it also regulates many of your body’s important systems, including the immune system, cardiovascular system, brain, and metabolism. More and more researchers are starting to agree that there is no “safe” dose of endocrine disruptors.
And the cost of toxic fashion doesn’t stop there. Over years and years, combinations of toxins from clothes, beauty products, and food can add up, causing us to develop issues like fatigue, dry or itchy skin, or reactive asthma.
But those who suffer most, at least immediately, are those who have or have developed chemical sensitivities to these toxins.
Take Chingy Wong, an attendant at Delta Airlines. Almost immediately after donning her new uniform for the first time, she started feeling sick. Eventually, she ended up in the ER, and the airline soon grounded her – she never flew again. Now, she reacts to all sorts of scents and chemicals that she didn’t before, like laundry detergent, and it’s become difficult to even go to the grocery store.
The development of chemical sensitivity is likely tied to mast cells, the immune system's guardian cells. Mast cells learn to recognize and respond to infectious agents and toxins, improving their response each time they encounter a threat. But in our chemical-laden world, mast cells can become over-sensitized and learn too well. They might start to treat all scents as toxic in an effort to protect the body against the initial offender, resulting in a disproportionate immune response.
Sometimes, toxic chemicals can trigger long-term autoimmune diseases. Tonya Osborne, an attendant at Southwest, is a living example. At first, the new polyester uniforms gave her red blotches on her chest and neck. But the issues continued to compile until it became impossible for her to work. Her body began attacking itself, leaving her with arthritis and needing surgeries on her hand, arm, and rotator cuff. In her own words, her body was falling apart.
The medical community still debates the nature of conditions like Tonya’s, given that their causes are difficult to determine. One thing they do agree on is that environmental factors can trigger a person’s immune system to overreact and attack itself. And of course these environmental factors can include chemicals like formaldehyde in blouses or heavy metals in pants.
What goes on overseas
Behind the bright colors and silky finishes of fast fashion lurks a sobering human toll. After all, when you get that cool new T-shirt in the mail, it didn’t just fall from the sky – someone, or rather a lot of people, helped to create it.
In textile hubs like India's Tirupur, stringent environmental regulations exist – and they do really seem to help prevent contamination of waterways. But those regulations don’t necessarily extend to the protection of the laborers dyeing and treating the fabrics. These workers handle toxins daily, breathing in particulates as they process freshly dyed fabrics saturated with secret chemical cocktails.
Chronic illnesses abound among these workers – debilitating respiratory issues, scarred skin, and utter fatigue from twelve-hour shifts day after day. Most lack health insurance or any recourse against employers.
Though some exemplary factories closely monitor chemical safety, proprietary chemical ingredients stay shrouded in secrecy. Workers don’t know what they’re handling – nor do the manufacturers, nor the brands selling the clothes. Some brands, including H&M, Shaw carpeting, and Seventh Generation Cleaning Products, sent an open letter to the European Commission calling for greater transparency on the part of chemical suppliers. But still, at the time of writing, nothing has come of it.
And that says nothing about less ethical brands, which are more focused on saving pennies than worker safety. They might switch to another factory in order to avoid the costs of implementing a wastewater treatment plant.
Suppliers have also found ways of bypassing the restricted substances list for manufacturing. The company that does the certification, Oeko-Tex, tests a supplier’s fabric just once a year. That means a dyehouse could pass the test with their existing suppliers, then secretly swap a chemical out for a cheaper one. This, in fact, is quite a common practice among less scrupulous suppliers.
For workers, conditions only worsen as you move downmarket. Smaller dyehouses serving local markets freely utilize the cheapest, completely unregulated chemicals. And under cover of night or stormy weather, they dump their toxic effluent directly into waterways.
Western consumers may not feel the acute health effects that overseas workers do. But those manufacturing fashion bear the brunt of its chemical onslaught.
What you can do
At this point, you might be feeling scared, daunted, depressed, or all of the above. Most likely, at least some of your clothes are currently harboring hazardous chemicals. So how can you protect yourself and your loved ones?
Don’t fear: here are some pretty simple guidelines you can follow to freshen up your wardrobe – literally.
First and foremost, avoid cheap knockoffs and brands peddling ultra-fast-fashion. The companies manufacturing these kinds of products are often not overseen by a responsible retailer or government body. With no reputation to worry about, these brands play fast and hard with the law until they get caught. Your clothes, and by extension your health, is the fire they’re playing with.
Instead, try to purchase from companies committed to supply chain transparency and eliminating toxins. Some well-known brands like H&M, Patagonia, and Levi's have made strides in this area. Also, look for third-party safety certifications, such as bluesign and Oeko-Tex, on product labels or brand websites.
Also, when possible, choose natural materials like cotton, wool, and silk over synthetic fibers like polyester and nylon. These synthetic materials are more likely to off-gas or leach chemicals. And be wary of performance fabrics boasting wrinkle and stain resistance, as they frequently contain what are known as PFAS chemicals. Those with sensitive skin should avoid brightly dyed clothes.
When it comes to washing, throw your haul into the wash with some fragrance-free detergent before wearing. This can remove some chemical residues. And skip the dry cleaners, whose toxic solvents permeate clothing. Despite "dry clean only" tags, most clothes can be gently hand washed and air dried.
Finally, don’t snub secondhand – check out the offerings at your local garage or yard sale. Buying secondhand means buying clothes that have had the time to off-gas. And in the end, trust your senses – if you find that an item has a strong chemical smell, return it.
Taking these steps empowers you to vote with your dollars for cleaner production. But the onus can't be entirely on consumers, of course.
Sweeping policy changes are needed so that hazardous chemicals are banned from all garments. Companies must be urged to fully disclose and test chemicals, instead of exposing unsuspecting shoppers. And fashion companies should be held liable for pollution and worker health.
The human and environmental toll of toxic fashion is too great to ignore. But by pressuring brands and advocating for reform, a safer fashion future is within our reach.
Final summary
The fashion industry has a massive pollution problem. Toxic chemicals used in dyeing processes pollute waterways, harm workers, and linger on clothes to affect everyday consumers. Major clothing brands have avoided accountability for their supply chains' pollution, and systemic changes are needed: things like consumer education, green chemistry innovations, and regulation to clean up the industry. For the general population, small everyday choices in clothes purchasing can help to support progressive companies trying to develop eco-friendly dyes and transparency.