A Q&A on the fashion industry's toxic chemicals problem — and how we can protect ourselves.Modern clothing is a technological marvel — it’s brighter than ever, more flame-resistant, more water-repellent.

It’s also often toxic. The properties we’ve come to know and expect stem from fossil fuel-derived chemicals that, according to a growing body of research, are making people sick.

There are the brominated azobenzene disperse dyes, which give polyester clothes their bright colors but can cause skin inflammation. There are the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” which make clothes waterproof but are linked to thyroid disorders and cancer. There are carcinogens like formaldehyde, used for bleaching or to prevent mold, and hormone disruptors like NPEO, used as a cleaning agent.

And then there are the hundreds, if not thousands, of chemicals that we know vanishingly little about. Paltry funding and patchy oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent federal agency, mean the U.S. government isn’t checking most of the clothes we buy for toxicity. When problems do arise for people — when they suspect that their clothing is behind their pesky rash, their wheezing cough, their splotchy skin — they are often disbelieved and offered little to no recourse from manufacturers, whether in the form of reimbursed medical bills or monetary damages. READ further from the source above