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Many of us are aware of the ethical minefield of fast fashion—from the labor issues to the environmental damage. But did you know that the clothes in your closet could be making you sick? In this episode, I’m joined by award-winning investigative journalist Alden Wicker, author of To Die For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick and How We Can Fight Back. Alden’s deep dive into the world of fashion goes beyond the well-known stories of sweatshops and waste to uncover the hidden impact of unregulated toxic chemicals in our clothing on our personal health.
From flame retardants and PFAS to endocrine disruptors, Alden and I explore the unseen dangers lurking in everyday garments and how these chemicals are connected to a myriad of health problems, from skin issues to autoimmune diseases, fertility challenges, and even cancer. We’ll talk about why these chemicals are allowed in the first place, what the fashion industry isn’t telling you, and how you can protect yourself and your family—without breaking the bank.
Whether you’re looking for practical tips to detox your wardrobe or want to learn more about the systemic changes needed in the fashion industry, this episode will empower you to make safer, more informed choices when it comes to your clothes.
Episode Highlights:
- How Alden Wicker got into sustainable fashion journalism—starting with a troubling case of Delta flight attendant uniforms making women sick.
- The toxic truth: What chemicals are lurking in our clothing, and why is no one talking about it?
- How these chemicals are affecting not just the environment but also our bodies.
- From rashes to reproductive health issues—how clothing can impact autoimmune diseases and fertility.
- Why women are disproportionately affected by toxic chemicals in fashion, and the industry’s gender gap in addressing the problem.
- Practical tips: How to choose safer clothing, avoid harmful chemicals, and shop smarter without spending a fortune.
- Beyond your wardrobe: How you can join collective actions and advocacy to help push for systemic change.
- Alden’s advice to her younger self: Simplifying health and happiness.
Resources & Links:
- Alden Wicker’s Website: EcoCult.com
- Safer States: saferstates.org
- Toxic-Free Future: toxicfreefuture.org
- Follow Alden on Instagram: @ecocultcom
- Connect with Dr. Aviva Romm: @dr.avivaromm
If this episode resonated with you, consider taking action by sharing it with a friend or leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t miss out on future episodes! Make sure to subscribe to On Health for more conversations like this one, bringing you expert insights and empowering you to take control of your health and well-being.
Transcript (edited for clarity and length)
Aviva: Many of us are aware of the ethical minefield of fast fashion—scary labor practices, including child labor and harmful environments, perhaps topping that list. And then there are the mountains of fast fashion waste piling up on the shores of developing countries around the world. But my guest today, Alden Wicker, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of the book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion is Making Us Sick and How We Can Fight Back, also looks at fast fashion through another and troubling lens: the impact of unregulated toxic chemicals that are most likely in each of our wardrobes right now on our personal health. Her book is a jolting exposé that reveals the true cost of toxic, largely unregulated chemicals found on most clothing today. The founder of the phenomenally successful blog site EcoCult and a contributor to major publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Wired, and more, Alden has also made expert appearances on NPR’s Fresh Air and the BBC to speak on consumer sustainability and the fashion system’s effect on people and the planet. I’ve personally had the opportunity to be on a panel with Alden twice, and she is a dynamic and dedicated activist and speaker, and I can’t wait to share her with you on this episode. Alden, thank you for being here with me today.
Alden: I’m so excited to be here, Aviva.
Aviva: Well, just so the listeners know how dedicated we are to making this episode happen, we’ve had three times where something came up for one of us, and then your computer updated right before we got on and we did half the interview, and then it said nothing had been recorded.
Alden: Yeah, it was so bad. And just to show people how dedicated I am to sustainability, I worked off of a slow, old laptop for far too long, and that interview was like, “Okay, it’s time to get a new laptop.” So now I have a new laptop. It is so fast, and I am ready for this interview. I’m so ready.
Aviva: Yay. Well, I’m the same. I have been known to keep laptops for eight and ten years, to the stink-eye of people around me saying, “What are you doing?” And then I’ll get a new one, and I’m like, “Oh, now I know what the buzz is all about.” It is really fast. But yeah, that’s a whole other book to write, just the impact of technology on waste streams and environmental toxins—just the battery chemicals and all of it. It’s just so, so toxic. But today we’re going to talk about another cheery topic, and one that’s actually very important, and that is sustainability in clothing—not just for our planet, which of course you and I both put at the top of our list—but for ourselves, partly because we know that sometimes people don’t take action when it comes to what’s in somebody else’s backyard. But when it’s happening in our bodies, it’s a different wake-up call. So, we all have an origin story of how we got into our work, and yours is really kind of interesting and unusual. It involved Delta flight uniforms, women’s health and men’s health, and your reporting. Can you take us back to the start of how you got hooked on talking about sustainable fashion and why it’s so important to you?
Alden: Yeah, so actually the story goes back to right after college, when I got into the food movement. I read all the books, and at the time I had disordered eating. I was unhappy with my health, and knowing and caring where my food came from revolutionized my health, and it’s been a core part of living a good life for me. And so at the time, I started looking around and I asked myself, “Okay, if it’s important where we get our food, it’s probably important where we get other things like beauty products, and cleaning products, and fashion, and also where we travel and all these different things.” And so I started writing about all of these things, and then fashion just came to dominate because, at the time, nobody was talking about sustainable fashion. This was 2010. That obviously has changed. It’s become a really popular topic.
But the thing that was starting to bother me by 2019, when this Delta flight attendant case came up, was that I couldn’t make the connection between what fashion was doing to developing countries—the environment there, the rivers, the garment workers, these communities, the climate—and our choices, and how it affects us. If you use vinegar and baking soda, it’s helpful for the planet and it’s also helpful for your health to clean your place. But I just couldn’t make that connection. I just figured like everybody that if you buy a shirt that says 100% cotton, it’s 100% cotton, and you look at it and you see cotton. And then I got this call from a radio show and they said, “Delta flight attendants are suing Lands' End, who made their uniforms, and saying they made them really sick.” And the symptoms that they were talking about—it would start with a rash that was really bad, like a chemical burn, or it would bleed; there’d be coughing, racing heart, extreme fatigue; hair started falling out—some flight attendants lost all of their hair or had male pattern baldness; menstrual problems, you name it: brain fog, all of these different things.
So they asked me to come on the radio show and talk about this, and I was like, “I do not know what you’re talking about. I have no idea. I’ve never heard of this.” I called a few people; they were like, “Nah, I don’t know.” So I decided there’s something here. I need to start looking into this, because I had two main questions. One is: what is in these uniforms that is making these flight attendants so sick? And second, is this affecting normal people who wear non-uniform clothing? And I found out pretty much the answer to the first question, which is the subject of our podcast today. But also, yes, it is affecting normal people. And the evidence has been piling up that this has been a very well-kept secret that’s been known inside the fashion industry, and it’s been kept from doctors, from women, from everybody who is affected by this issue. And so that became an entire book, and it was scandalous what I uncovered.
Aviva: It’s really interesting that this is a secret, in the sense that we’ve known, for example, about PFAS and flame retardants and carcinogenicity for a long time. I was a young, natural hippie mom. I didn’t let my kids wear flame retardant pajamas. This was back—my kids are in their thirties now, one’s almost 40, and they kind of would call me “mean mom.” They got over it, but it was like, “mean,” all our friends wear those. And I was buying cotton pajamas from Sweden with this company called Hanna Andersson. It was all I could find.
Alden: Oh, it’s still a great pajama company, by the way. Big recommend.
Aviva: That’s good to know. It’s so interesting. So, yeah, I feel like it should be kind of evident. I think what’s been so surprising to me is how much we assume is inert and just sort of baked into something that actually leaches out. So whether that’s flame retardant or stain-resistant stuff in our sofas, in our other furniture, or whether it’s dyes in our clothing, that these are in the fabric, they’re actually being absorbed onto and into our skin. And that’s something that you started to, I think, personally have some revelation about around your own health.
Alden: Yeah, I think—well, what you’re saying is really, really important because I think until now, the industry line was, “It doesn’t matter what’s in your clothing because you’re not eating your clothing, you’re not breathing in your clothing, all of these different things.” But none of that is true because of what you’re saying. And there’s been a lot of work that’s come out of Duke University. There is a researcher there, Dr. Heather Stapleton, and the only reason we know this is because she’s a mom. She bought a synthetic sports shirt for her son, and she didn’t wash it before she let him wear it, which is not usually the case. She knows what can be on clothing. And he developed a rash in the pattern of that shirt. So she just happened to have access to world-class testing equipment. So she asked her colleague to look at what’s in this shirt. And that led her down this path of saying, “Okay, we have these immuno-sensitizing dyes that are used on synthetic shirts. They’re also showing up in our house dust.” They go out and they test the house dust that’s in all of these different—all socioeconomic levels, all ethnicities and races, and they find these synthetic fibers with this immuno- and skin-sensitizing dye floating around in these houses.
Aviva: So we are breathing it in and we are eating it.
Alden: Yes, we are. And the more of these synthetic fibers they find, the more likelihood they would also find flame retardants and other hazardous chemicals. And so when we bring these things into our house, it’s the same thing you mentioned with PFAS, where we’ve known that PFAS is toxic, that Teflon, the brand name, is toxic for a long time. And when this series of airline attendants got sick, the first time it happened actually was at Alaska Airlines in 2011. The fashion brand that happened to be, Twin Hill, was like, “Oh yeah, I mean, there is Teflon, but that’s supposed to be there. And it’s not a problem.” Of course, it’s a problem! But it was just like, “Oh, it’s a problem for rivers and it’s a problem for the environment out there.” But the research coming out from Notre Dame is that it sheds. You touch it and it comes off on your hands. It’s shedding into your home. I mean, it’s a problem.
Aviva: It’s really—I’ve had two experiences directly myself with clothing and contact allergy. One was back around 1994. I had just attended a birth and came home from the birth and was getting ready to go to bed and put on some brand new sheets on my bed that my grandmother had sent me. And I opened the packages and I just put them on my bed and I went to sleep. And I woke up the next day with what’s called a petal rash, like little tiny red dots all over my torso, my back, my arms, my legs. And I was like, “Oh, shit, what is going on?” Because I was just literally handling a newborn the day before, and I was like, “Do I have German measles? Do I have measles? What is this?” So I had to go to a dermatologist and get a biopsy and wait for that to come back. And it came back as rash, basically like an allergic dermatitis. I never had anything like that in my life, and did some research and found out it was the sheets. Whatever the sheets were finished with is a residue that stays on it. So when they package and fold them, they stay all neat. And it’s not a starch; it’s something more insidious than that, like…
Alden: A softener or something.
Aviva: It’s something—I don’t remember. It was so oily, but it was something that resolved ever since. Never put anything like that with towels or sheets without washing them. But of course, I’m very committed to where I buy my things from, although often we’re paying a little more for that, and that’s not reasonable for everyone. So I do really wash those things that you’re going to have intimate close contact with.
And then you and I were on a panel the first time we were on a panel together last year, and I’ve been wearing tights my whole life. If you look at photographs of me when I was three, I’m wearing tights. I love tights. Fall comes, I’m like, “Break out the tights, break out the boots.” And I’ve always bought mostly cotton tights. Again, largely for me, the commitment is environmental. But since menopause—and this is a well-known phenomenon of menopause—many women become more sensitive to skin irritants. And I had not had any problems with this until one night we’re on a panel together and I’m wearing these black tights that I’ve worn a gazillion times. They were freshly cleaned in my good, clean laundry soap. And I started getting this bizarre itching in between my thighs, and I was like, “This is weird. Okay, well, maybe it was something from the hotel.”
Alden: Wait, that was happening during the panel?
Aviva: It was happening during the panel. It started during the panel you were talking about. I’m like, “Am I getting some contact low, some association?” And then I’m like, “This is so weird.” But maybe it was something from the hotel sheets or towels. We had stayed in the hotel the night before, some body lotion I had used from the hotel. I usually bring my own, but maybe I used something. I don’t know. And then it happened again a week later, and I was wearing that pair of tights again, but they had been washed. And then it happened another week later when I wore tights a lot, and it was winter, and when I wore another pair, it was all black tights. So I started looking up online the black dyes and how allergenic they can be. So now I’ve had to repurchase all either 100% cotton, 100% wool, or even silk.
And it’s not just the dyes, but it’s actually for me, I think what I’m sensitive to is one of the components of the little bit of spandex that’s always in tights to make them stretch. So I had this firsthand experience of like, “Wow, this is real.” And as a physician, I’ve treated patients who have nickel sensitivity, where they’re sensitive to the back of their pants snap or a belt buckle. But just wondering how many women are actually struggling with not just skin irritations, but other symptoms and conditions. And so let’s actually talk about that because part of what your research has uncovered is not just skin irritations, and you talked about what the flight attendants went through, but chronic diseases like autoimmunity, fertility challenges—let’s go there with this information that you have.
Alden: Absolutely. I mean, I will say I had the same experience because I put on—when the pandemic happened, I was like, “I’m never wearing tights again.” And then I put on black tights and I got this huge—TMI—but I got this huge pimple on my butt. And I realized, I was thinking, and I was like, “Oh, this happens every time I wear black synthetic leggings or tights, they cause this reaction.” And I mean, that is the most visible thing that can happen. Sometimes it happens right away. Sometimes for some women, it happens three days later, which makes it really hard to trace it back to the thing that caused that problem. But usually if you start getting rashes and you don’t address what is happening, that is the body being like, “Warning, I don’t like it. This is causing problems.” And it can start manifesting in much more alarming ways.
Aviva : Absolutely.
Alden: So one of the people I talked to, I interviewed a woman, Jacqueline, who worked in fashion production in New York City. She would get these boxes in from China and Peru and India, and she’d open them and they would smell so bad. And the first thing that happened was she started getting rashes on her hands. She’s touching all of these fresh samples. She was also very stressed. It’s a very stressful job. And also the fashion companies don’t treat her well. They don’t treat the garment factories well. Anyway, it started out as a rash, and then she had her appendix ruptured, which was probably unrelated. But after that, she developed such severe IBS, and then Crohn’s at such a young age that the doctor was like, “I’ve never seen it this bad before.” She almost died. She ended up in the hospital. And it’s hard to make that direct connection, but Crohn’s is one of many autoimmune diseases where the body is inflamed and starts attacking itself.
And I also spoke to—I interviewed some flight attendants who started with the rash and the cough while they were working. So this happened at Alaska Airlines, this happened at American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest. And several of the women I talked to, I would catch up with them. And they had developed several autoimmune diseases: lupus, ankylosing spondylitis. One woman had developed breast cancer on her nipple. So it’s not a sun thing. Again, it’s really hard. The epidemiology of saying your clothing caused this disease is almost impossible, especially if you’re talking about the court.
Aviva: Well, and this is the problem with science. When I was, and some of y'all may have heard me share the story before, but when I was applying for obstetrics residency at my alma mater, Yale, one of the people interviewing me actually saw on my application that I was interested in not just women’s health, but a master’s in public health in the intersection of environmental and reproductive health. So this was in 2008. And he literally looked at me and he said—Doctor, I’ll never forget as well, this is exactly what he said. It’s emblazoned in my brain—”Dr. Romm, you don’t believe in that BPA crap, do you?” And it was about 10 years later that Hugh Taylor, head of reproductive medicine at Yale, blew open the lid on BPA and things like, again, airline flight attendants, but these are the women—these are the workers who are taking your tickets when you’re going onto the airline, or women who are working at checkout counters.
Those shiny receipts and those shiny airline papers were coated in BPA. And it was found that that contact alone was associated with infertility and miscarriage. We see these people wearing gloves much more now. And so it’s like there’s this big lag in what is known in our bodies and what we’re registering as women. And we might not all be talking. How many of us are talking about the rash between our thighs, or the boil on our butt, or our miscarriage, or fertility problems? And then how many of us are putting two and two together like, “Oh, we all handle receipts at the checkout line?” No. And so there can be huge gaps in what we know and then what science actually believes and then tries to do anything about. Right. And that’s part of the gap we’re in now.
Alden: And ironically, BPA has been found in spandex and polyester workout clothing. So all of these women are trying to get healthy. One part of being healthy and also regulating your endocrine system is getting a good sweat in, and sweat draws whatever hazardous chemicals are in—especially plastics—out onto your skin. And then some of them can be absorbed into your bloodstream. So this is definitely a problem. There are many endocrine disruptors in our clothing. There’s BPA, like I just said; there are phthalates, especially in PVC, in vinyl, clear plastic shoes, and children’s jelly shoes have phthalates in them.
Aviva: Rain gear.
Alden: Rain gear, yep.
Aviva: I was shocked. I was looking for a raincoat a few years ago. I was going to Portugal and we were going during the rainy season, and my daughter thankfully told me about Rains, which is a company where not everything is 100%, but you can get raincoats that are not leaching stuff from them. But what was shocking to me wasn’t just the amount of these fluorinated chemicals in them, but that you would think the more you wear something and the more you wash it or it gets wet, the less activated it would be. But actually the more activated it gets, the more it’s leaching into your skin and into the environment.
Alden: Yeah. Anything waterproof has PFAS, which is a potent endocrine disruptor. It’s been linked to infertility, weight fluctuations, birth defects—all sorts of stuff. As you know…
Aviva:…day-to-day stuff, right. Endometriosis. You mentioned weight dysregulation, but we think about endocrine disruptors as affecting our estrogen, but they can also affect our insulin and be associated with things like polycystic ovary syndrome. It’s really—and you were mentioning how we start with these skin reactions and then it can snowball into these other things. And there are two ways this happens, right? One is, as you mentioned, inflammation. When we have chronic inflammation, it doesn’t just stay on the surface. We’re producing those inflammatory chemicals throughout our entire bodies. They cross our blood-brain barrier; they can contribute to anxiety and depression and mental health changes. So there’s the chronic inflammation, but then you also mentioned, when you were talking about chemicals found around the home in the dust, that some of them are actually directly immune dysregulating, so they can be affecting the immune system and the hormonal system at the same time.
Alden: Yeah, exactly. And you’re talking about how it just takes a long time to get this information from the peer-reviewed studies into general acceptance by all the men in science who give the grants and run the show to doctors. And so one of the frustrating things that I have witnessed is all my friends right now—I’m 37—all my friends, it seems like every woman I know and who I love is either saving her eggs or trying and failing to get pregnant and going through IVF. And I was talking—my best friend in the world—she actually, I mentioned her in the book, not by name, but there’s a scene where I’ve bought all this toxic clothing from cheap mall brands to have tested, and I had bought something from an ultra-fast fashion brand, and I was like, “Look at this stuff. This skirt smells.” It was like a vinyl pleather pink mini-skirt. And she smelled it, and she started reacting—like her nose filled up, she was coughing. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry I’d forgotten.” She can’t do fragrances very well. I was airing out the apartment.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of years, she’s trying to save her eggs, and she has had a horrendous time of it because IVF is very invasive, and it brings up all this residual trauma for her and all this stuff. And she’s on her third round. She did two rounds and she was like, “Okay, I’m done. I got one egg. I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore.” And she read the book and she decided, “You know what? Let me just take all this advice and try to get endocrine disruptors out of my environment.” So she got the fragrance out of her medicine cabinet, and the phthalates and the parabens. She got plastic out of her kitchen, and she switched out all of her synthetic underwear to organic cotton underwear. And she and her husband were monitoring her… I’m going to forget the name of the hormone that they were monitoring, but they were monitoring, and it just shot up in a good way. And she was like, “Okay, let me try this again.”
Aviva: Probably her AMH, probably her anti-Müllerian hormone.
Alden: Yes. She tried again. She had gone through two rounds. She’d gotten one egg. She got three eggs out of this round. And she was like, “Okay, good.” I was talking to her about it, and I was like, “Did any of your doctors—did any of the three clinics that you went to—tell you that you might have a better outcome if you detoxified your environment?” And she was like, “No, of course not. Why would they do that?” And this is…
Aviva: This is core to what I do when I work with folks who are struggling with their fertility, but even just preconception for people who aren’t yet. And it makes so much sense. We think about what we eat, but are we thinking about what we’re putting on our body, what we’re sitting on, what we’re sleeping on? And I know it is more costly and it takes time, but I really try to explain to people, it’s like a pay-now or pay-later situation. And of course, it’s not going to work for everybody, but it really is sort of the next level of how we can be thinking about what we’re putting on our body in terms of our body products, but what we’re wearing all day, what we’re sleeping in. Our vulva has so much absorptive tissue down there—thinking about your underwear. It’s not chichi or woo or irrelevant. It should just sort of be the way it is.
Women have far more autoimmune diseases than men do. Did you find in general in your research that this issue was impacting women more than men? That exposure…
Alden: Yes. Women are more impacted by autoimmune disease. And I think there’s a few things going on here, specifically related to fashion, that I want to call out, which is: one, women are pressured by society to buy more and cheaper fast fashion all the time, especially the synthetics. So men can get away with buying a pair of jeans and a cotton button-down, and that can be their uniform. Good for them. Love it for them. Women are pressured into buying all sorts of stuff just to show up at work or show up in their social life at baseline level—brighter colors, all sorts of stuff. There’s that. The second thing related to gender that I found was that women are the consumers of fashion; men are the ones who are making all of these decisions for women. So there are a lot of faces of sustainable fashion, and they’re all women—the women designers and the women influencers and the journalists.
But as I dug into this, the people who were able to give me the most information about what’s going on in the industry were men who own the dye houses, men who own the fashion brands, men who are the chemical engineers—men, men, men, men, men, men, men. And they’re the consultants. And so a lot of these men dismiss this as fear mongering rights, or they dismiss fashion as a “women’s issue,” or they just see women as an ATM—as a way to excavate money out of us instead of as a customer who they’re serving. And they’re the ones who are making decisions to either care about this or not care about this. And it’s always been that way. And then women are the garment workers who are getting poisoned as they sew these things in these developing countries. So from top to bottom, this is an issue that affects women more and is less taken seriously by the people who have the power to change this, which isn’t that the world we live in.
The only way I found to get men to care about this topic is to talk about the impact on their fertility and their testosterone.
Aviva: And we know male fertility is going down—male sperm quality and count are going down. We have to look again at all the reasons.
Alden: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that scientists are looking at is the abundance of endocrine disruptors in our environment. I mean, not just fashion, obviously—our furniture and our food and our cleaning products—but if… I don’t like to scare women. Women, we have so much on our plate. But I see this as a way where, especially if you’re going through this fertility journey or another health journey, it’s a way for you to feel like you have some control over what’s happening, and you can reduce your exposure to these hazardous chemicals, these carcinogens, these endocrine disruptors by making some changes in the way you shop or what you bring into your home.
Aviva: So let’s talk about those. Before we do, actually, I want to ask you a question. So we’re talking about endocrine disruptors. There’s something like 80,000 environmental toxins out there. Maybe 50 to 200 of them have been adequately tested on women—most of them are grandfathered in. Very few, up to a couple hundred at most, have been tested for women’s reproductive health or health at all. And most of them are not. Is it the same? I mean, are we talking about the same kind of set of chemicals that are just basically unregulated, including the dyes and all of that?
Alden: Yes, absolutely. I mean, fashion has some… Actually, it’s surprising for people to find this out, but it has some of the most multilayered and complex chemistry of any consumer product you could buy. And again, it doesn’t come with an ingredient list. Even if you know you’re allergic to disperse blue dye, or disperse black dye, or nickel, or formaldehyde, or any of these other things that people have reactions to, there’s no way for you to figure that out. You just have to go to the store with a good return policy, wear it, and see what happens. It’s really deplorable. I mean, the way I figure out what outdoor clothing doesn’t have PFAS on it is by trolling. I mean, I have all these resources on EcoCult so that people don’t have to do this, but trolling through all of these brands and doing deep dives and being like, “Okay, they say they have a durable water repellent. Is it PFAS-free?” No, it says it’s “PFOA-free,” which is not the same thing. And it’s very complicated. You have to be a chemist to figure this out.
Aviva: Well, and even if it’s not BPA, then we do this sort of greenwashing switch of like, “Oh, but it’s BPS,” and we don’t know that that’s actually any better.
Alden: It’s not any better. It’s chemically identical.
Aviva: It’s like a lateral move.
Alden: Yeah. So there’s a lot of work to regulate chemicals in classes. So regulating all the bisphenols, not just BPA; regulating all PFAS, not just PFOA and PFOS. And yes, there’s all these things in synthetics. Synthetic fibers are just plastic by another name.
Aviva: That’s what I’ve discovered for me. So I always try to support more cottage industries, smaller women-owned brands, and I have tried to buy as clean and green as I can since I was a teenager. And also, it’s like finding a bra. Even if it’s organic cotton, it’s going to have some elasticity in the band. And even just that little bit—that 5%—if you’re sensitive to the materials in those elastic sizes, it can be triggering. So you really do have to dig deep and find some brands, and it gets complicated.
I think there are more brands that are trying to do sustainable fashion at the high level—some of the bigger, more expensive designer brands—but they’re not necessarily getting granular about the fabric ingredients. They’re not affordable to most people. And then you’ve got your more crunchy brands, which a lot of people find are not really what they want to wear from a style perspective. So talk to us about all the things, from upcycling and aging to finding brands that you like that also work for you from a style perspective.
Alden: Yeah. Well, I have bad news and good news. I’ll start with the bad news. Just because you’re paying more for a fashion brand does not necessarily mean it’s better. I don’t think Prada has done anything on this front.
Aviva: There are a few brands like Maria McManus, which—I’ve actually met her. She’s very socially committed, and she’s a higher-end brand but with a limited line for women who are looking for that perfect suit. And I think, to my knowledge, she’s more conscious about it. But it’s such a small brand.
Alden: It’s not affordable to the masses. And then there are some smaller companies that are doing a great job, but their clothing is often more earthy looking.
Alden: Actually, a good part of the news is that there is a whole spectrum of brands that are doing better and have very strong chemical management. So I look at this in two ways. One way to look at it is just buy natural fiber. If you have reactions to polyester, just buy natural fiber. And you can find affordable natural fiber clothing at all sorts of brands.
Aviva: Everywhere.
Alden: Yes, everywhere. You have to really read the label. Some of these websites let you sort by material, so that’s great. The other way to look at it is to look at brands that have strong chemical management. And you might be surprised at some of the brands that do. H&M has very strong chemical management; Levi’s has really strong chemical management; and it goes all the way up to luxury—Gucci has strong chemical management. But you have everything in between. Now, EcoCult does have— we have several articles. We talk about plastic-free activewear; we have a guide to the most non-toxic brands that are like nothing but natural fibers only, using Oeko-Tex certified fabrics, or working with BlueSign. Those are two labels that you can look for. They’re small, they have a lot of heart. Some of them don’t even use polyester thread, they don’t use polyester tags. They are really geared toward people who have high sensitivity.
You can find affordable things at some of these larger mall brands. Levi’s has really strong chemical management, so it’s out there. It’s a little bit hard to find, which is why we gather it all up at EcoCult and try to make it really easy. But there are some surprising things that people should know, like a common misconception, which I had as well, is that certified organic means non-toxic. Unfortunately, that’s not true. The organic certification really governs what happens in the field with pesticides and fertilizers. But cotton is so heavily processed, it doesn’t really matter what happens in the field; it matters what happens afterward. And that certification literally is just—I talked to a dye house owner in Italy, and he was like, “I just sent in some paperwork saying I was going to use these certain chemicals, and they gave me the certification.”
I asked, “Did anybody ever come check and see that you’re using these chemicals?” And he said, “No, I mean, I care about my product, but it would be really easy for me to swap in cheap things.” I mean, not as easy in Italy, but you have some companies that people think are really good, like Pact—they used to be really good, and it’s gone totally downhill. I’ve heard from multiple people that they’ve had allergic reactions when opening their stuff and putting on their clothing. And it’s because they just have the organic certification, everything’s made in India, and they’re not actually overseeing the process. They know it’s a problem. They’re getting returns out and they’re just… I don’t know, they’re greenwashing. And it’s really unfortunate.
Aviva: It’s so hard. I mean, we have to be detectives around our food, around our medicine, around our cosmetics. I know it can feel overwhelming. So it sounds like there are some core principles: buy cotton whenever we can, or silk, or wool, or non-synthetic fibers like linen. These are all non-synthetics. Avoid bright colors, and then there’s the issue with black dye. So, how do you suggest addressing that?
Alden: Yeah, I would say avoid bright or super-saturated colors. Go for your pastels, your whites, your earthy tones. There are brands that have natural dyes, which are almost always better. And other fabrics that people can go for are semi-synthetics like Lyocell, bamboo, rayon, and modal. These actually tend to play really nicely with people’s skin sensitivities, they’re soft, and also they’re non-toxic. But again, you can’t just pick one of these principles; you have to sort of take them all together. So, yeah—natural fibers, not super-saturated colors, and avoid marketing performance promises. If anything promises to be anti-wrinkle, stain-proof, water-resistant, easy-care, or anti-odor…
Aviva: Or antifungal. I’m also concerned about the antibacterial and antifungal ones.
Alden: Yeah, that’s just a biocide. If you’re the kind of person who’s avoiding triclosan-containing hand soap because of what it does to your microbiome and bacteria resistance, you shouldn’t be wearing anti-odor and biocide-antifungal clothing either. It’s achieved with a chemical finish that can harm your health.
Aviva: One thing that I’ve done is I bought a not-crazy-expensive—like $45—hand steamer. And for those fabrics that one might usually get dry-cleaned—because dry-cleaning is a whole other environmental waste stream source, but also a personal exposure source, and also for the workers in there—you get a longer life out of your clothing if you can launder it less and do things like steaming it and storing it well at home. What are your thoughts on dry cleaning?
Alden: Dry cleaning is very toxic. Just to put this in context, there are these things called Superfund sites. They’re sites that the federal government has designated as too toxic to even build anything on, and they’ve given money to remediate them. And there are a lot of Superfund sites that used to be dry cleaners.
Aviva: You know what? We have one in our neighboring town. I live in western Massachusetts. One of the towns here is Great Barrington, which has been voted one of the best small towns in the country to live in year after year. It’s a tourist town, with people visiting from Connecticut and New York and all over the place, and there is a dry cleaning facility that has been empty for decades in the middle of town. And there are restaurants and all kinds of businesses going up around it, but it just remains empty. Nobody’s able to tear it down or build on it. I think it’s just too toxic to be remediated. So it’s this weird landmark of forever chemicals, basically. It’s bizarre.
Alden: Yeah, so you don’t want to bring that into your home. There’s a lot you can do to avoid dry cleaning. I feel like I dress really well, and I’ve taken one thing to the dry cleaner.
Aviva:
You do! I’ve seen you in public. You dress amazingly.
Alden: Thank you! I took one item to the dry cleaner because it was a delicate, artisan-made top that I could never replace. And I was like, “Okay, I’ve worn this 50 times, it’s starting to smell. Let me give it to them.” But there are a lot of things you can do before you get to that point. First of all, if you’re wearing natural fibers, you can air them out. Just hang them up, and they will release their odor.
Aviva: I do that with a drying rack. I have a little drying rack that I keep in the laundry room, and I just hang stuff over it.
Alden: Yes! You can also spot-clean, deodorize with a vinegar-water solution or a bottom-shelf vodka and water solution. I’ve done this before. I have a very expensive silk top that I bought, and I immediately spilled coffee on it. I was like, “Great, awesome.” But I used the vinegar-water solution—just like new. Didn’t need to take it to the dry cleaner, saved myself some money, and saved myself some stress.
Aviva: And an iron—an old-fashioned iron.
Alden: Yes!
Aviva: That works. Usually, I’ll save my ironing. I really dislike ironing, and I’m quite bad at it actually. My grandmother was the most amazing at ironing; she could make everything look beautiful. And I am not that person, for whatever reason. But I’ll save my ironing, put on a couple of shows, and just stand there with my ironing board and iron and watch.
Alden: Yeah, save it up. I do the same thing.
Aviva: Maybe that’s why I’m not as good at it—half-watching the shows! But we can do it.
Alden: Speaking of laundry, we should talk about scented laundry products.
Aviva: Yes, let’s do it.
Alden: Scented laundry products—the devil. There has been research showing that the air coming out of dryers where all these different chemicals are combining actually creates new, known hazardous carcinogens and chemicals that are restricted in the U.S. for sale and use. But they come out of this combination. Don’t use dryer sheets—use wool dryer balls. Don’t use scented detergent. It coats your clothing in a hazardous film that can set off your allergies, give you a rash, asthma—all of these different things. If you’re chemically sensitive, it’s totally a no-go. Even if it’s from one of the clean brands, just don’t do it. Use unscented detergent products because somebody told me in the industry, “If you buy sustainable, non-toxic fashion and you use scented laundry products, you’re undoing all the good that you did.” It sticks for a long time. People who are chemically sensitive will buy secondhand clothing and somebody has been using Tide or Gain on it, and they’ll have to wash it three or four times or do something called laundry stripping, which we’re working on a guide for at EcoCult, to get that scent off because it is meant to stay there.
Aviva: It really sticks. And it’s not just what we’re absorbing through our skin. Actually breathing in those phthalates and other chemicals that those scents are made of actually binds estrogen receptors and other receptors in our bloodstream. So I’m huge on just using unscented everything for your cleaning products, no scents in your cars—all the things.
Alden, you wrote in your book poignantly that we cannot just shop our way out of this problem. So we’ve talked about all the things that we can do personally, and of course to every listener, we understand that the things we’re saying require a different level of spring cleaning or autumn cleaning. When you go through your closet, this may not be for you, and that’s okay. But do what you can as you’re purchasing new items. I think another thing to emphasize is that as women, we’re sold on needing new clothes for every season.
How much do we really need, and how much can we just shop our own closets? That, to me, has become a really big practice—shopping my own closet. I’ll go eight months without buying anything new and find new ways to combine what I have. It’s become a practice to really think about what I’m buying. Those fashion magazines or online blogs and influencers… they’re all paid marketing to get us to support the fashion industry. Nobody needs a whole new wardrobe every season.
Alden: Uniform dressing is a power play. Have you ever looked at Anna Wintour? She literally runs Vogue, and she’s been wearing the same outfits—like three outfits—since 1995. And that’s a power play.
Aviva: Arianna Huffington did this too. She did a really cool campaign a few years ago called “Wear It Again,” or something like that. She wore the same outfit to all these high-profile events like the Met Gala, the Grand Academy Awards, and the Kennedy Center. Her message was that women shouldn’t feel pressured to wear something different every time. She wanted to show that we don’t need to constantly buy new outfits. And while none of us are probably going to the Met Gala, I know I’ve never been invited, we all feel this pressure, like, “I’m going to that wedding, that birthday party, and I can’t wear the same dress.” It’s so ingrained in our culture.
She started doing this campaign because she realized how much time and energy women spend thinking about what to wear, getting dressed, and the cost that comes with that. She said if we could just take that time back—even an hour or two each week—and put it into collective mind power, problem-solving, or simply enjoying our lives more, it would be transformative.
So what are some of the collective actions we can take? We talked about changing our shopping habits, but is there more we can do beyond that?
Alden: Absolutely. There are a few really juicy opportunities to get involved. One way is through advocacy organizations and nonprofits that are working to regulate toxic chemicals. One of them is Safer States. They have a strategy to pass state-level legislation because it’s really hard to get these things passed at the federal level. They focus on getting states like Maine, Vermont, California, New York, Washington, and Oregon to pass legislation regulating chemicals. Then, when enough states have these laws, it creates pressure for the federal government to step in and create a unified regulation. So, you can get involved in your local Safer States advocacy campaign by reaching out to your state representatives, who are more accessible than federal representatives.
Another organization is Toxic-Free Future. They do research, name and shame, and get retailers to commit to not carrying toxic, hazardous items. They ran a big campaign around REI, pushing them to stop selling products with PFAS. You can support their work through donations or by sharing their message and calling on retailers to do better.
And if you live in a big city or state like New York, there’s the Fashion Act currently in the legislature. It’s a huge piece of legislation that would require large fashion brands to know and disclose who’s making their clothes, the environmental impact, and the chemical use in the production process. So if you’re in New York, call your state representatives and let them know you support it.
Aviva: And there’s your Substack, too. You have a great newsletter and are always sharing updates and practical tips.
Alden: Yes! I have a newsletter connected to my website, EcoCult.com. People can sign up there to keep up with this issue. I’m also on Instagram and TikTok as @EcoCult, where I share educational content and a bit of entertainment around these topics. It’s a great way to stay informed and feel more empowered when it comes to making choices around fashion.
Aviva: We’ll include links to all of these resources in the show notes for our listeners. Alden, I just want to say thank you for your diligent and dogged research, your absolute willingness to tell the truth—you’re kind of a whistleblower in the best way. I’m so excited to share your work with my On Health community and to see what we can all do to push the needle forward.
One last question that I love to ask all my guests before we wrap up: If you could go back in time and tell your younger self one thing, how old would she be, and what would you tell her?
Alden: Oh, wow. I think I would tell my college-age self that it doesn’t have to be so complicated. Just eat whole, unprocessed foods, avoid the fad diets, and don’t obsess over it. Do things that make you feel good. Go on hikes instead of spending hours at the gym. Learn how to cook. It doesn’t have to be fancy—just focus on doing things that nourish your mind and body. Slow down and listen to yourself.
Aviva: I love that. It’s such a grounding reminder. Thank you, Alden, for being here today, for your passion, and for your work. And to everyone listening, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share it with a friend or someone in your life who could benefit from these insights. Make sure to follow me on Instagram @DrAvivaRomm, and visit avivaromm.com to join the conversation about the show on my blog. While you’re there, sign up for my free newsletter, where I share tips on taking back your health. Don’t forget to leave a rating and a review for the podcast, and hit that follow button to be notified of new episodes every week. I can’t wait to see you next time!
