To Dye For

Informationen zum 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. Klappentext "... exposâe that reveals the true cost of the toxic, largely unregulated chemicals found on most clothing today."--Provided by publisher. Leseprobe 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 hi...

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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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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.

Only a handful of people in the world truly know or understand what's in the clothes we wear. And what we don't know is literally making us sick. A longtime fashion industry detective, Wicker was troubled when she started hearing from flight attendants who had shocking adverse reactions to their new synthetic, high-performance uniforms. As she dug deeper, she realized this wasn't isolated to one airline, one industry, or even one manufacturer. In fact, there are more than 3,000 different chemicals used in fashion today, with up to 50 of them present on a single garment (including children and baby clothes!) and a good portion of them are known to be carcinogenic, hormone-disrupting, and sensitizing to the skin and lungs.

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, society-wide weight gain, 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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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…