Are Clothes Making You Sick? Toxic Chemicals in Fabrics - BPA, PFAS, Phthalates, Cumulative Impact
- 'Are your clothes making you sick? The opaque world of chemicals in fashion,' The Guardian, July 3, 2023. - Edited.
Our outfits contain BPA, PFAS & other dangerous substances – but we still know little about their cumulative impact
The first thing that happened when Mary, an Alaska Airlines attendant, received a new, high-performance, synthetic uniform in the spring of 2011 was a hacking cough. Then a rash bloomed on her chest. Next came migraines, brain fog, a racing heart, and blurry vision. Mary was one of hundreds of Alaska Airlines attendants reporting that the new uniforms were causing blistering rashes, swollen eyelids crusted with pus, hives, and in the most serious case, breathing problems and allergic reactions so severe that one attendant, John, had to be taken off the plane and to the ER multiple times. Tests commissioned by Alaska Airlines and the flight attendants’ union turned up:
tributyl phosphate, lead, arsenic, cobalt, antimony, restricted disperse dyes known to cause allergic reactions, toluene, hexavalent chromium, and dimethyl fumarate, an antifungal that had recently been banned in the European Union.
But the uniform maker avoided culpability in court by saying none of these many mixed chemicals, on their own, were present at high enough levels to cause all of the different reactions. Alaska Airlines announced in 2013 it would procure new uniforms, without admitting the uniforms had caused health issues. A lawsuit from attendants against Twin Hill was thrown out in 2016 for lack of evidence. A 2018 Harvard study found that after the introduction of the uniforms, the number of attendants with multiple chemical sensitivity, sore throats, cough, shortness of breath, itchy skin, rashes and hives, itchy eyes, loss of voice, and blurred vision had all more or less doubled.
In 2021, John, who had been in perfect health before the new airline uniforms, died at age 66 after years of seeking and failing to find treatment. The official cause of his death was cardiopulmonary arrest, secondary asthma. Mary, who has continued with some difficulty to work for Alaska Airlines, last year was diagnosed with 3 autoimmune diseases: mixed connective tissue disease, lupus, and Sjögren’s. The sick attendants story has played out again and again as American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest all introduced new uniforms - brightly colored polyester (instead of wool) layered with anti-wrinkle, stain-resistant, and flame-retardant textile technology.
The impact of exposure to harmful chemicals on textile workers, many of whom work in developing countries, has also been well documented and includes breathing problems, rashes, and even death.
Karly Hiser's oldest son was a toddler when his eczema worsened. She switched to using fragrance-free soaps, non-toxic cleaning products, & lotion, Vaseline, and prescription steroid cream on her son. Open wounds still developed on his hands and legs, and they got infected. A pediatric nurse practitioner on a budget, Hiser had been buying cheap, mass-market clothing brands. What finally made her son's eczema manageable was a sewing machine, non-toxic fabric from an online store, and making his clothes herself. Like food nutrition labeling, she would prefer better labeling for clothing. “It’s becoming more difficult to avoid these chemicals,” says Dr Elizabeth Seymour. “There are multiple chemicals that are put in everything. And your clothing is included in that.” While beauty, cleaning products, & packaged foods come with an ingredient list, fashion does not, even though testing reveals it has some of the most complicated & multilayered chemical profiles of any product... - More, https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/jul/02/fashion-chemicals-pfas-bpa-toxic
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