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0:43

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm

0:45

Andreea Viscontis. This is a podcast

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0:57

is more than what we see.

1:03

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article

1:06

that suggested that some of

1:08

the clothing I wear might be

1:10

full of toxic chemicals.

1:12

At first glance, I didn't give it much thought.

1:16

But as I read on, I started

1:17

to realize that this was an

1:20

investigative report that was done by a

1:22

pretty reputable company. And it really

1:24

called out some of the brands that make up

1:26

actually probably the majority of my clothing.

1:29

And so I started to wonder, if there are

1:31

toxic chemicals in our clothing, would

1:34

we know? And could they

1:36

actually affect us? Could they get

1:38

through our skin's barrier and

1:41

actually make us sick? So

1:43

I was excited to hear about a new book

1:45

by Alden Wicker called To Die For,

1:48

How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick and

1:50

How We Can Fight Back. She's an award-winning

1:52

journalist and a sustainable fashion expert.

1:55

She's the founder and editor-in-chief of the

1:57

website ecocult.com, which

1:59

popular and around for about 10 years

2:02

and she's published investigative pieces for

2:04

the New York Times, Vogue, and Wired.

2:11

Alden Wicker, welcome to Inquiring Minds.

2:14

Thank you so much for having me. So I think

2:16

this book is super timely only because

2:19

it's really personally relevant to me like

2:21

in the past week

2:22

or so because

2:24

I was you know scrolling on

2:26

social media as one does and

2:28

this one article caught my eye which

2:31

was about athletic and how

2:33

there's a you know high

2:36

a large amount of BPA

2:38

potentially in their clothing

2:40

and like that's basically my uniform

2:43

since the pandemic you know in

2:47

yoga pants

2:47

and sports bras and apparently

2:50

they can be

2:51

toxic so you know I

2:53

know we can't we can't say that without potentially

2:55

getting sued by Aestleta so I'm just saying I heard

2:57

it on the internet but here

3:00

you're an expert so

3:02

what's going on is there any truth

3:04

to this idea that our clothing can

3:08

actually make us sick?

3:09

Yeah there absolutely is a truth

3:12

to this and I think

3:14

this is all really new information for

3:17

a lot of people even you know

3:19

I've been writing about sustainable fashion for over a decade

3:22

for freelance and also from my own website

3:24

Eco-cult and you know back

3:26

when I heard first heard about this idea

3:29

that clothing could make you sick this

3:31

was in I think 2018 or 2019 and

3:34

I was like that can't be true like I've

3:36

never heard anything about that you

3:38

know I haven't heard you know

3:41

I thought you know you hear about all sorts of things making

3:43

you sick there's a lot of misinformation out there so I thought

3:46

if there's literally no smoke then there cannot

3:48

be a fire but it turns out that

3:50

there's just been it's just been

3:52

really kept hush-hush and there just hasn't

3:54

been enough research on it so what you

3:57

were seeing was there is a an

3:59

environmental nonprofit in California

4:02

called the Center for Environmental Health and

4:05

they've been pulling products

4:07

consumer products and having them tested for certain

4:10

substances that are known to be toxic or bad

4:13

for our health. One of those substances

4:15

is BPA and California

4:18

specifically says not that

4:20

you can't have BPA in your consumer

4:22

product but that if you're

4:25

a company and you're selling a product to

4:27

Californians and it has some

4:29

of these toxic substances in it, things

4:32

like phthalates, BPA which

4:34

is Bisphenol A which is a hormone

4:37

disrupting chemical as is phthalates,

4:39

they're also hormone disrupting and

4:41

other toxic you know blood things like that.

4:44

If you're selling a product and it

4:46

has one of these things in it and you

4:48

don't tell consumers that there is a

4:50

danger then you can be notified

4:54

and then you can be sued. So the

4:57

Center for Environmental Health has been testing all these products

4:59

and they found BPA this

5:02

hormone disrupting chemical you

5:04

might have heard about it because there was a big scare

5:06

around baby bottles and water

5:09

bottles some time ago so they

5:12

found it in sports bras they found

5:14

it in socks first they found it

5:16

in other polyester

5:19

products with spandex which makes

5:21

them stretchy so really

5:23

any of your athleisure or athletic

5:25

gear that's stretchy and tight is

5:28

at risk and I think one of the other really interesting

5:30

things about this was that they found it in all

5:33

sorts of brands so we're not just talking about

5:35

sketchy you know only

5:37

sold on Instagram brands that

5:39

you've never heard of or you know random

5:42

quote-unquote brands that are on Amazon

5:45

or she in or anything they found it in Nike

5:47

and Adidas and like all these other

5:50

brands that you know actually do

5:52

have programs to try to keep their products

5:56

non-toxic so it was that

5:58

was a big wiggle call actually.

6:01

Yes, I mean, when I read that, there's a part of me, I remember

6:03

the baby bottle thing too. And I

6:05

remember sort of, you know, especially as a new parent

6:07

being panicked about that, and like,

6:09

you know, buying all these glass bottles, which

6:11

like thankfully never shattered and, you

6:14

know, created a bigger

6:15

problem. You know, but

6:17

it was hard for me though to believe that

6:20

these kinds of amounts, you know,

6:23

that it could be harmful. And the reason that I

6:25

think I'm still skeptical on this is because

6:27

I don't know how you would run the

6:29

study to demonstrate it. I mean, we've

6:32

got so much information

6:34

about alcohol. And for decades,

6:36

the story was so conflicting, because

6:39

it's virtually impossible to ask people

6:41

to, you know, be part of a randomized

6:44

controlled trial in which they like

6:47

either do or don't drink alcohol for a

6:49

lifetime, right? And same thing with clothing.

6:52

I mean, how do you how do you test

6:55

whether the I

6:57

mean, like, I get that there's these amounts

7:00

in the clothing, but is it seeping

7:02

into like, how do you know whether

7:03

or not it can seep into the skin and actually affect us?

7:06

Yeah, I mean, you're right. There's a lot that

7:08

we don't know, you know, we don't there

7:11

hasn't been a good study on, you

7:13

know, how much of these toxic substances,

7:16

if they end up on our skin, how much

7:19

they're being absorbed into the skin. So

7:21

for example, we know PFAS

7:24

perfluorinated chemistry, like the kind of stuff

7:26

that you would find in Teflon and rain

7:28

resistant outdoor gear, we know

7:31

that that stuff is flaking off into our home's

7:33

dust, we know it's getting onto

7:35

our skin from

7:36

these treated products, but we don't

7:38

nobody studied yet, like how much of

7:41

it gets through our skin

7:43

into our blood. But we do know

7:45

when it comes to BPA, there

7:47

have been studies that show

7:49

there's been at least one really good study that showed

7:51

that touching BPA receipt

7:54

paper covered receipt paper would

7:57

elevate people's levels of

7:59

BPA. in their urine. So we know

8:01

that BPA can, once it touches your

8:04

skin, it can get through your

8:06

skin into

8:08

your body. So we know that.

8:10

We also know that that

8:13

when you sweat in these

8:15

products, that sweat can help draw

8:18

whatever is in that fabric

8:21

out of the fabric and onto the skin.

8:23

So that's also another

8:25

data point. And then we also know

8:28

that when it comes to hormone-disrupting

8:30

chemicals, they're officially called

8:32

endocrine disruptors, there is increasing

8:34

evidence and a lot of the majority

8:37

of researchers have started to believe

8:39

that the dose does not make

8:41

the poison. So for things

8:43

like, you might have heard that like if you drink enough

8:45

water or you ingest enough

8:48

salt, you can die, right? So

8:50

the dose makes the poison. And

8:52

that's true for things like formaldehyde. You

8:54

know, there's formaldehyde in apples, you

8:56

know, there was this whole thing in California about

8:59

how Starbucks was going to have to label

9:01

its coffee as carcinogenic because

9:04

of certain products in there at tiny,

9:06

tiny, tiny, tiny levels. But

9:08

when it comes to endocrine disruptors, they're

9:11

kind of chaotic.

9:13

Just a tiny bit. We're talking parts

9:16

per billion. We're talking some drops

9:18

in an Olympic-sized swimming pool have

9:20

been shown to have been able

9:22

to penetrate into,

9:25

you know, into our bodies and have health

9:28

effects on not just, you know,

9:30

us, but also if we're carrying

9:32

a baby. If we're going to

9:34

carry a baby in the future, that

9:37

baby, that fetus might have

9:39

health effects after they're born because

9:41

of endocrine disruptors. So just

9:43

a tiny amount of an endocrine

9:46

disruptor can have pretty chaotic

9:48

and not well understood, but it can

9:50

have health effects. So when you

9:53

add all of those things together, it's

9:55

really alarming. And, you know, we

9:57

should be cautious about, you know, letting

10:00

these things into our athletic

10:03

products, not just our food packaging,

10:06

but also the things that we're wearing against our skin

10:08

and sweating in. So

10:09

I feel a little bit better because I don't actually sweat

10:12

in my athleisure gear.

10:13

That's just, you know, for everyday

10:15

wear. But I am concerned now

10:17

that, you know, I have given my children

10:19

asthma and eczema because

10:21

of my yoga pant habit. So that's

10:24

not good. That's adding to my mother's guilt. But,

10:27

you know, you, and I want to start

10:29

out or I guess we've

10:31

already been talking for a while, but I want to ask you

10:33

about how you started out your book to die

10:35

for with the Delta Airlines

10:38

case. Because in some ways, you

10:40

know, it's still hard for me to accept

10:43

that, you know, the kinds of choices that we make in

10:45

terms of what we wear can have these pretty profound

10:47

effects on our kids and on

10:50

our health. But in

10:52

your Delta Airlines story, I mean,

10:54

that had an immediate visible effect

10:57

on the skin of the people that were forced to wear

10:59

these uniforms. So let's start there. Cause I feel

11:01

like in some ways that's an easier

11:04

story for me to track.

11:06

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah,

11:08

like I said, I first heard about this, I

11:10

think, kind of, I should double check

11:12

this. It was either 2018 or 2019. And

11:16

a radio show reached out to me and they said, hey,

11:19

Delta airline attendants, they're suing Delta.

11:21

They're suing Lanzen, the maker of their uniforms

11:23

because they're saying that their uniforms are making

11:26

them sick. Wow. Lanzen is like

11:28

a notoriously, a brand known for like

11:31

high quality clothing. Yeah, absolutely.

11:33

And so Lanzen also

11:35

apparently makes uniforms. They've made uniforms

11:38

for several other airlines as well. And

11:40

some of those other airlines actually had

11:43

used Lanzen uniforms

11:45

to replace other uniforms that had been

11:47

toxic in making attendance

11:49

sick. So it was surprising

11:51

that this was happening, but some of

11:54

the health effects that I

11:56

ended up reading about and also talking

11:58

about with some... these Delta employees

12:01

were, I mean, they're harrowing, right?

12:03

Like, some of the, they, these

12:05

women would become completely disabled when they

12:07

were wearing the uniforms or around other

12:11

attendants in the plane that were wearing these uniforms,

12:13

right? Breathing problems, rashes,

12:16

severe eczema, like lesions

12:19

that were bloody because they were so bad.

12:21

They actually just flew on Delta

12:24

a few days ago. And I always

12:27

sort of like, I don't want, I don't want to bother

12:29

them, but I'm always like, um, excuse me when they're giving out

12:31

pretzels. Like, can you, um, so

12:33

I see you have the new uniforms. Like, did you have

12:36

problems with them? And, um,

12:38

this woman told me, um, yeah, she

12:40

said, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe when

12:42

I was wearing it. I didn't want to attribute it to the uniforms

12:44

because Delta had them tested. They

12:46

said they were fine. Everything was under

12:48

the limit for safety. You know, the

12:50

chemicals on there couldn't have been causing

12:53

my problems. And so I wanted to believe them, but

12:55

eventually she said she just got a

12:57

look alike uniform that she bought. Um,

13:00

and, uh, she said it was night and day. Her

13:02

symptoms immediately went away. And yeah,

13:06

I mean, the thing is, is that the

13:09

airline attendants are, they're sort

13:11

of canaries in the coal mine. They're, um, there's

13:13

this experiment that's like really

13:16

actually neat clothes experiment where

13:19

four different airlines, they all

13:21

got them at the same time. They all started

13:23

wearing them the pretty much the same day,

13:25

right? So there's official roll out day. They,

13:28

um, they start getting these variety of health

13:31

problems at the same time. They start

13:33

talking to each other about it. Um, you

13:35

know, what's different? Well, the uniforms,

13:37

it happens in both genders. It

13:40

happens in all age groups. And,

13:43

uh, there was even a Harvard study of

13:45

Alaska attendants that showed that

13:48

they're reporting of certain illnesses

13:51

and conditions, um, before the

13:53

uniforms and after the uniforms, it went

13:55

up. So things like chemical

13:57

sensitivity, breathing problems, crashes,

14:01

fatigue, hair loss,

14:03

things like that. The study did

14:05

not track long-term health problems, so

14:07

like cancer, autoimmune disease,

14:09

things like that. Though anecdotally, I've

14:12

heard from a lot of attendants that they eventually did develop

14:14

pretty severe autoimmune diseases like

14:17

lupus, fibromyalgia.

14:20

One Delta attendant told me that she has

14:23

skin cancer now on her nipple, which

14:26

clearly is not from sun exposure. So

14:30

really, really serious stuff. And it's

14:32

sort of clear what's causing it. But with

14:34

you or I, if we're wearing

14:36

things that have these finishes, we wear such a

14:38

variety of things. We can't

14:41

talk to anybody else who's wearing the exact same thing

14:43

as long as we are to compare notes. So

14:45

it's really hard to make that connection. Yeah,

14:48

and I think

14:49

that, especially

14:51

here as a really evidence-based

14:54

show, that it's hard

14:56

to make that connection. And I think

14:59

that still leaves room for some

15:01

skepticism. But on the other

15:03

hand, because these kinds of anecdotal

15:06

things, there's lots of reasons why

15:08

she might have gotten cancer, et cetera. But

15:12

I agree with you that there seems

15:14

to be a connection here, and

15:17

it warrants further study. And so I wonder

15:19

if, except at the same time,

15:24

a lot of these companies, and

15:26

as you mention it, they don't, it's

15:28

not like they're pulling

15:29

the things from market. Like if

15:32

you go to

15:32

Aslata, they made a statement

15:35

saying that there is no

15:38

toxic, there are no toxic chemicals in

15:40

their products, and they stand by their products. And

15:42

it's not like they're pulling them from the shelves. And so there's

15:45

a part of me, too, that wonders about, are

15:47

we at the early stages of something

15:50

like tobacco use and

15:52

smoking, where companies

15:54

really are in denial, even though

15:56

they kind of know that there's I

15:58

don't know, that there's a problem. there's probably a risk here?

16:01

Or do you feel like even

16:04

the industry itself is not

16:06

convinced yet that there is a kind of one

16:08

to one relationship between the kinds of chemicals

16:10

that are found in the clothing and these

16:13

adverse health effects?

16:14

Yeah, I think it's a combination. So

16:18

a few things. One is that a

16:21

lot of brands, some brands have people,

16:24

experts on staff, that understand

16:27

chemicals. Some brands do not. So

16:30

some brands, they

16:32

could turn to somebody within the brand and they could say,

16:35

what's going on here? And that person would explain

16:37

what's going on. A lot of them have

16:39

nobody on staff that can speak to this.

16:42

They just ask their factories

16:44

to get them a product with certain performance

16:46

qualities and the factories oblige. So

16:49

I think a lot of brands don't really fully understand

16:52

what's going on. There's very

16:54

few people who are unaffiliated

16:56

with brands. Very few experts

16:59

that are not in some way paid

17:01

by the industry who can talk about

17:03

this. So there

17:06

are official textile

17:08

limits that are provided as voluntary

17:10

limits by various consultancies

17:13

and labs and labels. But

17:16

a lot of them are based on best

17:18

practice or hunches

17:21

or outdated research. So

17:25

what happens is that a lot

17:28

of these brands are paying

17:30

experts or paying labs or paying certifications

17:33

to give them a clean bill of health. They

17:36

send their stuff off to get tested. And

17:38

they say, is it clean? And

17:42

it comes back with this clean bill of health based on

17:45

testing of some chemicals. They're

17:47

never going to be able to test for 30,000 different chemicals

17:50

or even 10,000 or even 3,000. It

17:52

would be too expensive. So they test

17:55

for a bunch of them that they think

17:57

they're high risk for. And then if they get the clean

17:59

bill of health, they can. can hold that up and say, we

18:01

don't agree with your findings. Look, we got

18:03

it tested. They said it was fame. And

18:06

so there's just a lot of confusion

18:09

right now amongst

18:11

brands, and especially consumers.

18:13

But I don't think brands fully

18:16

understand what's happening right

18:18

now. And you can kind of see the arc of

18:21

this in terms of what I mentioned before, which

18:23

is PFAS, right? The Teflon,

18:26

it

18:27

gives waterproofing to fabrics.

18:29

And stainproofing to fabrics.

18:31

And so right now, we're at

18:33

the point where PFAS

18:35

has become the new lead in our

18:37

environment. It's everywhere. It's

18:40

contaminated everything. It's

18:42

in our water. It's

18:45

still on a ton of outdoor products. It's still

18:47

on a ton of normal products

18:50

that it just shouldn't be on, right? It's

18:52

been found in really high levels on

18:55

children's uniforms, school uniforms. It's

18:57

been found in things' underwear,

19:00

the period panties. Things just had

19:02

a huge settlement. And so they're just

19:04

starting to catch up to this. There's legislation

19:07

in New York and California that's been passed

19:09

that said you can't put it on apparel anymore.

19:12

But brands are still trying to figure out, okay,

19:15

so who do we talk to about this in our supply

19:17

chain? How do we test for it? How do

19:19

we know? What about contamination? All

19:21

of these different things. And I think

19:24

we're just seeing

19:27

brands start

19:27

to take PFAS seriously.

19:30

And now they're like, oh, no. Now

19:33

they're finding BPA. And

19:36

I think they're just like, God, we've

19:39

got enough in our hands with PFAS. Now we have to

19:41

worry about BPA and our stuff. I

19:43

don't even know how it got in there. Why is it in there?

19:46

Is this the problem that we should worry about? And I think

19:48

they're gonna stall as long

19:50

as possible before admitting

19:53

that it's a problem. Because if it's

19:55

found in literally every single polyester

19:58

product with stretchy spandex, Like

20:00

how would they,

20:02

they would have to pull everything. What would they sell?

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slash minds. Rules and restrictions

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may apply. Yeah,

22:49

I mean, and that's exactly the worry is that it isn't everything. So,

22:53

you know, you're in a kind of catch-22 situation, like on the one

22:55

hand, I can see why, you know, these companies are

22:57

not at all motivated to delve too deeply into this. But

23:02

on the other hand, if it is really in

23:04

everything we're wearing, then, you know, when should

23:06

we be expecting to see some of these effects? You

23:09

know, you, you, um, you

23:11

mentioned BPA in particular, but, um,

23:13

but there, you know, and PFAS, like, you know, there, there doesn't seem

23:15

to be, and maybe there is, maybe

23:18

there's some evidence that there's also now more of

23:20

these, like, are we just finding out that

23:22

our clothes contain more of these kinds of chemicals? Because, you

23:24

know, we all like stretchy fabrics now that, you know, waistbands

23:26

are no longer in style, or is it, you know, and so, so when should, when

23:28

should we see this, this effect on the population? Um,

23:36

if

23:42

there's more of them, or is it just something that's been around

23:45

this whole time? And, you know, these, these

23:47

kinds of health effects, we've

23:49

just been, that they're already here,

23:51

and that, and that we're just suffering from the, but without knowing

23:54

their cause?

23:55

I think it's actually a combination. I think

23:57

that in the past 20 years. Brands

24:00

have used fancy finishes

24:03

and performance finishes and performance

24:05

fabrics in order to sell their

24:07

products For at a markup, right?

24:11

If they can put a little you know

24:14

Trademark next to it then

24:16

they can sell it for more money. It can be a trade secret

24:19

all of these different things, right? It's not profitable

24:21

to sell a plain cotton white

24:23

t-shirt It is profitable

24:25

to sell a cotton t-shirt

24:28

that is stay improved and anti-wrinkle

24:30

and all of these different things So we

24:33

are seeing more and more finishes being

24:35

put on a lot of these products I mean,

24:37

there's a reason why the attendants start

24:39

like tenants the airline attendants started

24:41

getting really sick In the past decade

24:44

as they got new uniforms is because these new

24:46

uniforms First of all, they started

24:48

being synthetic they also started

24:50

coming with all of these fun performance properties

24:53

stay improved and odor proof and mold proof and

24:55

Wrinkle-proof and like all of

24:57

these different things I mean, so you

25:00

have a lot of layers of chemistry put

25:02

on top of them So so it

25:04

is partly that we're seeing more

25:06

of this stuff getting put on things Also,

25:09

we've outsourced production to a lot of

25:11

different countries that have very

25:13

lax environmental standards Are

25:15

really good at getting faked

25:17

testing things are safe They

25:20

can put anything they want on there There

25:23

are some chemicals that are banned for every

25:25

use and in every way in the United States if

25:28

you put that chemical something like chloridine,

25:30

which is an Extremely toxic

25:32

pesticide you could put that on

25:35

a piece of clothing

25:37

sell it in

25:38

let's say Ohio to a

25:40

consumer and You've

25:42

done nothing illegal so

25:45

there's also the outsourcing aspect and

25:47

then On top of that.

25:50

I think we're just starting to understand

25:52

a little bit more like What

25:54

these chemicals do to the body? But

25:57

again, like it's very very

25:59

hard to learn link a person's

26:01

health effects to what they're wearing, especially

26:04

if it's not a uniform that they're wearing all the

26:06

time. The best studies we have

26:08

on exposure to chemicals are usually on

26:11

factory workers who are working in a factory,

26:13

something like a permanent press factory, where

26:15

you can say, okay, they were exposed to this much formaldehyde

26:19

every single day that they were working. And

26:21

now we're seeing that there's this much

26:23

higher of a chance of them getting something like

26:26

leukemia. That kind of

26:28

study can take 10 years, and

26:30

you're just not going to get that on a population

26:34

level study where

26:36

you're asking people, what's in your closet?

26:39

Well, 250 items later,

26:42

which one was it that caused these health

26:44

effects?

26:45

Yeah, I think that's the

26:47

scary side of it from the scientific perspective,

26:49

is that this is going to be really hard to study

26:52

and really hard to understand. We

26:55

talked a little bit about the kinds of health

26:57

effects that people seem

27:00

to be associating with these

27:02

chemicals in their fashion. You talked about

27:04

autoimmune diseases. And

27:07

so I assume that includes things like asthma

27:09

and eczema, which seem kind of related to

27:11

that part of the spectrum

27:14

in terms of mechanism. And

27:16

infertility, if we

27:18

think about maybe BPA and sort of the

27:20

hormonal effects, is there anything

27:23

out of those categories that

27:25

you feel like there's

27:27

a kind of specific link that we've seen? Why

27:30

is it that the

27:32

autoimmune

27:32

issues

27:35

might be triggered by some of these chemicals? Do we know

27:37

that?

27:38

Yeah, well, I think you mentioned it. In

27:44

a lot of cases, if somebody is starting

27:46

to have allergic reactions,

27:48

if you don't get those allergic reactions

27:51

under control, they can turn

27:54

into chronic inflammation, which can turn into

27:56

autoimmune diseases. But there's starting

27:58

to be preliminary research. research around

28:01

out of Duke there's a

28:03

study led by Heather Stapleton,

28:05

Lee Ferguson, and Kirsten

28:08

Ovidahl. And the study

28:11

was looking specifically at azobenzene

28:13

dispersed dyes. These are the types of dyes

28:15

that you pretty much have to use on polyester,

28:18

say for, there's a few exceptions, but if

28:20

you're buying a polyester

28:23

product

28:24

and it has color, it has

28:26

dispersed in it. And

28:29

they first started studying this because they were

28:31

just finding this chemical

28:34

in house dust. They were like, what is

28:36

this chemical? Like, where is it coming from?

28:38

And they started to realize, oh, maybe it's coming

28:40

from polyester textiles.

28:43

And the reason why they started looking into this even

28:46

more is because Heather Stapleton

28:48

has a son who Dr. Heather

28:51

Stapleton has a son who she

28:53

bought a polyester shirt for, he

28:56

wore it. And then when he, when

28:59

she took it off later, because he was complaining the news itchy,

29:01

it had a rash in the pattern of

29:04

the of the shirt. And so as

29:06

a mother, she started being like, you know, alarm bells

29:08

are going off. And so they ended up doing this, like,

29:11

all this research. And the final conclusion

29:13

was that, yes, there's a ton

29:16

of these dyes in polyester

29:19

products. They are getting into our house

29:21

dust, which means we're probably ingesting them and

29:23

breathing them in. And then on top of that,

29:26

that they are linked to, to

29:29

skin sensitization. So

29:31

things like rashes. And this is,

29:33

you know, we've known for a while that

29:36

certain azo dyes have been linked

29:38

to cancer, that they're sensitizers.

29:41

If you go into your dermatologist and you say

29:43

like, hey, I'm having skin problems, they might

29:45

give you a patch test where they put a bunch of stuff on

29:47

your back. And a couple of those things

29:50

are dispersed dyes for polyester. The

29:52

thing is, is that the industry was saying, well, it's

29:54

just a few of them. The rest are okay.

29:57

But we didn't haven't studied the rest. These

30:01

researchers were even trying to figure

30:03

out what these chemicals are and they're

30:05

not even in the literature. They're not even

30:08

listed in the literature. Nobody's

30:11

looked at them. Nobody's studied them. So

30:14

we're being told, don't worry about it. We would know

30:16

if it was a problem. We wouldn't know because they

30:18

haven't been studied.

30:19

Yeah. I mean, I think that that's...

30:22

Yeah. I hear you. Yeah.

30:25

I think it is very alarming to think about

30:27

just the magnitude of

30:29

potential mechanisms, but

30:32

also, yeah, I mean, it

30:34

does seem like there's a lot of areas

30:37

that need further studying, especially

30:39

as a lot of these new techniques,

30:42

as you mentioned, to make the clothing more

30:44

sellable are probably coming online

30:47

all the time. Yeah. But

30:50

I'm also always very mindful

30:52

that we don't want to cause panic

30:55

if it's not there. But one other

30:57

outcome that you talk about is society-wide

31:00

weight gain. And I wonder if you could sort of tell

31:02

us about what you think the mechanism might be there.

31:05

Yeah. I mean, obviously, this

31:07

is a really touchy subject because

31:09

as you may know, the term obesity

31:12

is a little bit controversial. How

31:14

do we measure it? How do we define it? It

31:17

can seem a little bit arbitrary. So

31:21

I like to use weight fluctuations instead of obesity.

31:23

But in all of the research that

31:25

you see around the toxic effects of

31:28

perfluorinated chemistry, PFAS, obesity

31:31

is one of the things that a research has

31:33

linked to exposure to PFAS.

31:37

I think,

31:39

can we say that obesity is caused by

31:41

PFAS? Potentially,

31:43

it could be like a hormonal thing, right?

31:46

PFAS is an endocrine disruptor.

31:49

Your hormones do have

31:51

a lot to do with your appetite and

31:54

your weight, right? If somebody has hypo

31:56

or hyperthyroidism, they might

31:59

have problems. was like wildly fluctuating

32:01

weight. So that's the

32:04

mechanism there. I talk in

32:06

the book about how one of the flight attendants just

32:09

like gained 40 pounds in a year, nothing

32:11

else changed. And obviously that set off

32:13

alarm bells for her. So it is, there's

32:16

been some like talk about

32:18

why, what

32:21

is causing the so-called obesity epidemic,

32:24

right? What changed? And there

32:26

could be a bunch of different things. There's a lot

32:28

of debate around it, but one of the substances

32:31

that has been fingered is PFAS, especially

32:34

because it is in our water, it

32:37

is in our products, and it is in our

32:39

homes. And it was invented in the 1950s, but

32:42

it became more and more widespread by

32:44

the 80s and 90s, which is about

32:47

when the obesity epidemic really

32:49

started to take off.

32:51

So what do you hope is the outcome of people understanding

32:54

this? I mean, I understand that, you know, we

32:56

probably wanna call for more scientific

32:59

studies that we can understand, you know, how,

33:01

you know, what the effects are and how big they are and

33:04

how much we should really be worried about this.

33:06

But you also mentioned that, you know, there isn't a lot of regulation

33:09

here. And so that suggests that there's a kind

33:11

of policy making that you

33:13

hope is ultimately down the

33:15

pipeline. So what do you hope might change

33:19

that might make it safer for us

33:21

to wear the clothes that, you know, feel good on us?

33:24

Yeah, I mean, there's a few really, there's

33:26

a few changes. I mean, putting aside

33:29

an entire overhaul of the entire chemical industry,

33:31

which I think is far, far, far

33:33

overdue. I mean, the EPA hasn't really

33:35

made any significant updates or

33:38

banned any chemicals since the 80s. It's

33:41

actually egregious. But

33:43

specifically when it comes to fashion, I think

33:46

one thing that we really need is we need an ingredient list.

33:49

So if you know you're allergic to

33:51

dispersed dyes or nickel or

33:55

any of these other, you know, chemicals

33:57

that could be in fashion. You

34:00

want to avoid PFAS. There's no way

34:02

for you to know what's in your clothing,

34:04

right? So when you pick up a cleaning product when

34:06

you pick up a beauty product, it'll

34:09

tell you all the ingredients but all fashion

34:11

will tell you is that it is You

34:15

know 96 polyester and 4% spandex Which

34:19

doesn't really give you all the information you need as

34:22

a consumer Now I say

34:24

that and I want to caveat it by saying

34:26

that I don't think this is a

34:28

shopping issue I don't think we're gonna choose

34:31

this not fall out of this problem

34:34

And I don't want to put more pressure on

34:36

especially women to sort of make

34:38

the perfect shopping choices all the

34:40

time And I don't want this to turn

34:42

into like another way that people with resources

34:45

Can keep themselves safe when people without

34:47

resources can't so this

34:50

is just a starting point because I think once

34:53

people and legislators and Other

34:56

you know nonprofits actually have a clear view

34:58

of all the different chemicals that are in clothing Then they'll

35:00

be more well resourced to take the next step,

35:03

which is to say, you know, these things should

35:05

not be in clothing They just they just

35:07

shouldn't be there. We shouldn't have endocrine disruptors.

35:09

We shouldn't have P fast

35:11

we shouldn't have BPA. We shouldn't have phthalates.

35:14

We shouldn't have you know We

35:16

should be able to make a choice that if we're allergic We

35:19

can pick up something with confidence and know

35:21

it's not going to cause us to break out in hives

35:23

or or Exacerbate our asthma.

35:26

So that's that's one thing. I yeah

35:28

and just the general overhaul of how we do

35:30

chemistry in the United States I think you

35:33

know, we don't have federal legislation that

35:35

protects us when it comes to clothing

35:38

It only federal legislation only

35:40

looks at for chemicals and only

35:43

in children's products So again,

35:45

like there's there's nothing limiting what

35:47

you can put in adult products Even

35:50

maternity wear which is is pretty

35:53

is pretty pretty scary. Yeah,

35:55

definitely need a lot more chemists to

35:58

be educated and

37:59

all. So, yeah.

38:02

Well, Alden, thank you so much for

38:05

being on Inquiring Minds and helping us make

38:07

better choices. It was my pleasure being here.

38:09

Thank you so much. Well,

38:14

that's it for another episode. And

38:17

before I go throwing out all my yoga pants,

38:19

I just need to remind myself that Alden's

38:21

warning is that we just don't know

38:24

how the materials in the

38:26

clothes that we wear may or may not be affecting

38:28

us. It's not that we know definitively

38:31

that they are affecting us, but rather

38:33

that there's more research to be done. So

38:36

that's it for another episode. Thanks for listening. And

38:39

if you want to hear more, don't forget to subscribe. If

38:41

you'd like to get an ad-free version of the show, consider

38:43

supporting us at patreon.com slash

38:46

inquiring

38:46

minds.

38:47

I want to especially thank David Noel,

38:49

Haring Chang, Sean Johnson, Jordan

38:51

Miller, Kyle Raihala, Michael Galgul,

38:54

Eric Clark, Yushi Lin, Clark Lindgren,

38:57

Joelle, Stephan Meyer Ewald, Dale

38:59

the Master,

38:59

and Charles Biles.

39:01

Inquiring Minds is produced by Adam Isaac.

39:03

I'm your host, Andrea Viscontis.

39:05

See you soon.

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