Human Wrongs Watch
By Laura Kenyon, Greenpeace*, 4 December 2012 – Halogenated anilines and perfluorinated chemicals are two things you’ve probably never heard of before. In addition to being mouthfuls to pronounce, both are toxic chemicals that are harmful to the environment and life, both in water and on land. Some anilines can become carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, and several perfluorinated chemicals are known to be toxic for the reproductive and nervous systems of mammals.
03 December 2012. Life inside A Dye Factory © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace
Even though these chemicals might be unfamiliar there is a chance you are already in a close relationship with them, as they may have been used in the manufacturing of the clothes you are wearing.
These hazardous chemicals were both found in water samples taken in the textile heartland of China, in the coastal Zhejiang Province.
That’s where the connection to your clothes comes in. Many popular global fashion labels, including Levi’s, Calvin Klein and GAP, source textiles from the manufacturing facilities in the area where the samples were taken, as shown in the Greenpeace International report “Toxic Threads: Putting Pollution on Parade“.
And that means that many of us are wearing toxic fashion.
