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

Wicker, Alden

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593422619 ISBN 13: 9780593422618

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A Silent Spring for your wardrobe, To Dye For is a jolting exposé that reveals the true cost of the toxic, largely unregulated chemicals found on most clothing today.

Many of us are aware of the ethical minefield that is fast fashion: the dodgy labor practices, the lax environmental standards, and the mountains of waste piling up on the shores of developing countries. But have you stopped to consider the dangerous effects your clothes are having on your own health? Award-winning journalist Alden Wicker breaks open a story hiding in plain sight: the unregulated toxic chemicals that are likely in your wardrobe right now, how they’re harming you, and what you can do about it.

In To Dye For, Wicker reveals how clothing manufacturers have successfully swept consumers’ concerns under the rug for more than 150 years, and why synthetic fashion and dyes made from fossil fuels are so deeply intertwined with the rise of autoimmune disease, infertility, asthma, eczema, and more. In fact, there’s little to no regulation of the clothes and textiles we wear each day—from uniforms to fast fashion, outdoor gear, and even the face masks that have become ubiquitous in recent years. Wicker explains how we got here, what the stakes are, and what all of us can do in the fight for a safe and healthy wardrobe for all.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alden Wicker is an award-winning journalist, sustainable-fashion expert, and founder and editor-in-chief of EcoCult. She’s published investigative pieces for The New York Times, Vogue, Wired, and has been interviewed for the BBC, NPR, Reuters, Fortune, CBC, and more. In 2021, Wicker won the American Society of Journalists and Authors Award for business reporting.

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Chapter 1

In Case of Emergency

Chemicals in the Not-So-Friendly Skies

Mary stopped the beverage service cart in the aisle and nudged the brake on with her foot. Smiling, she leaned toward the passenger by the window and took in a breath before asking them if they would like anything to drink.

At that moment, she started to choke, and buried her face in the elbow of her navy-blue jacket as she continued to hack. Gathering herself, she apologized profusely, poured herself some water, and continued with some effort to serve drinks. After she managed to finish the service, she stood in the back galley, wondering what the heck was going on. Lately, she had been coughing all the time, even though she had no other symptoms of a cold or flu. It was the spring of 2011, almost a decade before the Covid pandemic started making its way around the world in airplane cabins.

Mary (not her real name, to protect her job) was otherwise healthy and active. She had a gym membership and liked to go hiking in the verdant mountains that rise thousands of feet above Seattle, where she lives and where Alaska Airlines, the company she works for, is headquartered. Well, she hiked when she had time. Mary had a hectic work schedule, flying six days a week all over the US. Sometimes she would work fourteen days in a row, which lasted anywhere from six to twelve hours, with just enough time for a quick dip in the hotel pool and a sleep during her layovers. But by and large, she loved her job. "I drank the Kool-Aid," she said later. "I thought I mattered. I thought I was part of the family."

Mary, along with her twenty-eight hundred colleagues, had received a box from Twin Hill containing her new Alaska Airlines uniform a few months before, in late December 2010. When she pulled out about a dozen plastic-wrapped pieces, she judged it a big improvement over the old frumpy, bulky wool uniform made by M&H, an American uniform maker. These new pieces had a modern cut and were made with a sleek, polyester-wool blend fabric. What she didn't know is that while pure wool is naturally flame retardant, the new uniform's flame retardancy was provided by a chemical finish-and the fabric came with many other performance-enhancing chemicals, such as stain-proofing provided by Teflon.

Mary had heard senior attendants complaining that the new uniforms were giving them a rash. "I thought, these people are just mad because they don't like change," she told me a decade later. She was having her own breathing problems, but said, "I had not put two and two together. No one had ever heard of being poisoned by clothes before."

One of those senior attendants who was complaining the most was John, an attendant with twenty-five years of experience who lived in Long Beach, California, near his base of LAX. Back in 1986, John was a fifth-degree, black belt tae kwon do instructor when a friend invited him along for an interview to be a flight attendant at a small airline. He'd gone just for fun, but when he was offered the job, he took it and never looked back. The very next year, the airline was bought and absorbed into Alaska Airlines. By his midfifties, John had softened a bit around the middle but still had a handsome, boyish charm, with a square jaw, dimpled chin, and short brown hair.

According to his partner, Marco, John was low-key, even reserved, on the ground. But when he donned his Alaska Airlines uniform, he took on a different persona: gregarious, silly, charming. If he noticed a colleague was feeling down, he would go out of his way to make them laugh. At fast-food restaurants, he would order kids' meals so he could give the toys to fussy children on flights. He celebrated his colleagues' birthdays and put on funny hats for holidays.

John was a hard worker, and loved his job. When Alaska's insufficient maintenance of an older plane led it to crash off the California coast in 2000, killing everyone on board, John went right back to work. "It's just like getting thrown off a horse-you need to get right back on, otherwise you won't do it again," he told Marco.
 
John and Marco had met during one of John's layovers in San Francisco. They made it official with a domestic partnership in 2007, before it was legal for two men to be married in the US. John kept his home near LAX but, as an attendant with seniority, would select as many layovers in San Francisco as possible so that he had to spend only a few days a week away from Marco, who lived in the Bay Area.
 
"He wanted to keep working as long as possible. He loved his job," Marco told me by phone in 2021. "That all changed in 2010, when they issued those uniforms."
 
On a cool December day, John pulled the new uniform pieces out of the box and started trying them on in front of the mirror. Within the next two days, his whole upper body flushed with a rash, and he had trouble breathing, according to complaints he submitted later to the flight attendant union. He wore the outfit to work in January, before Alaska communicated the official rollout date, and he landed in the emergency room with severely compromised breathing and blisters on his arms. He came away from that ER visit with a $4,900 bill and a diagnosis of bedbug bites. Few had heard of a piece of clothing being toxic before. Rashes? Sure. That can happen when the pH balance of fabric is off. But landing in the emergency room from a blazer? The doctors had nothing to offer.
 
In fact, this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. In 2009, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees-the people who work the security checkpoints in airports across the US-started telling the American Federation of Government Employees that their uniforms gave them rashes, light-headedness, red eyes, swollen and cracked lips, and runny or bloody noses.
 
A TSA representative downplayed the issue. Less than 1 percent of the fifty thousand TSA workers were complaining, after all. And the Nashville-based manufacturer of their uniforms, VF Solutions, had the uniforms tested and said all substances, including formaldehyde, were below "acceptable limits."
 
"It's not a new fabric," VF Solutions' vice president for safety told the Washington Post. Just a typical cotton-polyester blend. There was no reason for these reactions to kick up now. But TSA agents were offered the option of 100 percent cotton alternatives. We don't know if John, his doctors, or even anyone at Alaska Airlines had heard about the TSA uniforms-I heard about them from another attendant who had done hours and hours of research.
 
All Alaska Airlines flight attendants were required to report to work in their new uniforms by February 23, 2011. Within days, Judith Anderson, an industrial hygienist in the Department of Safety, Health, and Security at the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), started receiving emails and calls from members about the new uniforms and nasty reactions.
 
Anderson is slender and pale, with green eyes and straight, light-brown hair she keeps in a conservative sideswept crop. She has the air of a preschool teacher, with a soft voice that emanates both concern and gentle authority. Like the attendants she represented, Anderson tended to wear a conservative skirt suit and tights-with the addition of a perky scarf; you might find yourself asking her for soda water and pretzels.
 
In 1993, when Anderson graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and biopsychology, she started looking around for a master's program that would allow her to work in public health and have a real-world impact. When she learned about the field of industrial hygiene, it seemed like a great fit.
 
Anderson's second job out of school-after a stint in cancer research in British Columbia-was at George Washington University,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593422619
• ISBN 13: 9780593422618
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland