Do you know what you are putting on your back? Unlike food or beauty products, our clothes don’t come with a long list of ingredients. But they can have a surprising number of worrying chemicals in them. But how toxic can they be?
Journalist Alden Wicker explains what she discovered when she began to investigate what went into manufacturing our clothing. What she found was bewildering and hard to unravel – it was incredibly difficult to find out the chemicals in a single garment. She spoke to textile workers with serious illnesses that they claim are due to the chemicals used in the textile industry. And one of the hundreds of flight attendants who has launched a lawsuit because she says she developed serious health problems after being given new uniforms explains what happened.
Nosheen Iqbal hears how the problem in clothes manufacturing has developed, and what needs to be done to shine a light on the issue. She hears what consumers can do to reduce the dangers in their wardrobe.
This episode was first played on the Guardian’s global news podcast Today in Focus.
You can subscribe for free to Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast Full Story on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google podcasts
Photograph: Prostock-Studio/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Support The Guardian
The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.