Review of Alden Wicker’s book “To Dye For” about chemical treatments of textiles and how they can cause sickness

Ever wondered what is actually in the clothes you wear? Why new clothes often have a strange chemical odor? This book tells the horrifying story.

Keywords:    textiles, clothes, garments, fabrics, uniforms, chemical treatment, chemicals, chemical industry, health effects, multiple chemical sensitivity, MCS

Alden Wicker is an investigative journalist in New York who sets out to expose the fashion industry’s use of toxic chemicals.

She starts with several flight attendants who worked for Alaska Airlines. In 2011 the airline rolled out new uniforms for their air crews. The fabrics were treated with many chemicals to make them wrinkle free, stain resistant, flame resistant, anti-odor and other features.

More than a hundred flight attendants got rashes, eczema, asthma, irritable bowels or other effects from their new uniforms. A few eventually developed multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).

The airline first ignored the complaints, then downplayed them by blaming the flight attendants as being “overly sensitive.”

The union got involved and sent samples of the uniforms to a lab which found no less than 47 chemicals embedded in the fabrics. That included pesticides, solvents, and heavy metals, such as hexavalent chromium of Erin Brockovich fame.

Eventually, the affected flight attendants were allowed to buy uniforms from other manufacturers, at their own expense. The people who were permanently harmed got no respect, and no compensation. Some tried to sue, but lost in court.

This all gets Alden Wicker to spend a year investigating the fashion industry, which operates under very lax rules in most of the world. They have thousands of chemicals at their disposal to make it easier to work the fibers, protect against mildew (factories are often in hot and humid climates), make garments soft, and in any color desired. And then comes whatever treatment the customers ask for, such as water-resistance, wrinkle-resistance, etc.

Many of these chemicals have never been tested whether they are toxic or not. They are simply assumed to be safe. And when a chemical is banned the manufacturers switch to another that is equally toxic, in an ongoing game of hide-and-seek.

As one industry spokesperson flippantly states: “you don’t eat your clothes.”

Actually, people do. Fibers and chemicals do flake off clothes and become dust, which people breathe in and then eventually end up in their stomachs. This especially happens to children, who like to put things in their mouths.

Scientists have analyzed the dust in people’s homes, and found all sorts of chemicals shed from clothing.

And people sweat, which interacts with clothes that touch the skin, hence the many rashes the flight attendants reported.

Bacteria that naturally live on the skin can also interact with the chemicals. And anything that is on the skin can migrate in through the skin.

Parts of the fashion industry adheres to a set of standards, but they are not based on solid science and do not at all consider that several chemicals can together be more toxic than each of the chemicals separately. They also do not consider that some people are more affected than the majority. These standards are voluntary in most countries.

The European Union is the only area taking this problem seriously. There they have stricter mandatory standards for what can be in clothing, but it is hard to enforce. In 2021 the European Chemical Agency tested six thousand consumer products bought directly by mail order from outside the EU. They found 78 percent violated the strict EU standards. It was not just clothing, but also kid’s toys, jewelry, and other items.

It has been known within the industry for 150 years that the dyes they use make a few people very sick. The industry simply shrugs them off as just being “overly sensitive.” They can sometimes get a thousand complaints about a shipment of clothes, but just shrug it off as “psychological.”

To learn about MCS, Wicker interviews three environmental illness specialists: the doctors Elizabeth Seymour, Ann McCampbell and Claudia Miller.

Wicker also travels to India’s textile capital Tirupur, where she visits with workers exposed to chemicals in the factories. She also tours various factories, and notice the enormous difference between those which are certified to sell to Europe, and the rest. The worst of them exclusively make clothes sold in Asia, where there are no standards at all.

The ground water in Tirupur is so polluted from these factories that they couldn’t even use it themselves, but had to put in pipelines from afar.

Some garment manufacturers do test the cloths they receive, but admit that they often “fudge” the results to make them appear acceptable to their Western customers.

The workers report all sorts of health effects from their jobs, such as diseases of the hearts, lungs, skin, immune system, and digestive systems. But there are no safer jobs available.

A compelling book

Alden Wicker has produced a story that is well-researched, compelling, never boring, and often horrifying. You’ll never look at a rack of clothes the same way again after reading this (unless you live in the European Union).

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2025