Kate Holmquiston denim's dark side.
You may not know that the pair of jeans you're wearing have probably polluted the planet and may even be polluting you with residues of dozens of chemicals.
They may look as though you bought them second-hand from a vintage store specialising in the cast-offs of cowboys and mechanics, but every tear and mark is part of an elaborate distressing treatment that, when done by factories and in countries where environmental standards are lax, involves processes you may not want to think about.
Such as workers suffering from byssinosis, also known as brown lung, as a result of breathing in cotton dust impregnated with pesticides and fungi. The possibility that the denim was soaked in noxious dyes that remain in your jeans until you wash them, may be something you want to think about even less, and that can include jeans made from organic cotton.
And then there's the exploitation issue. Children on 14-hour shifts making your jeans, for example.
Obviously, you can always read the label, but that's meaningless in most cases. As Rachel Louise Snyder explains in her unusual investigative book, Fugitive Denim, a pair of jeans sporting a "Made in Peru" label might have cotton from Azerbaijan, weaving from Italy, cutting and sewing from China, washing and finishing from Mexico and distribution from Los Angeles. Jeans made in Bangladesh may actually have been made in China, which has a history of dumping carcinogenic dyes and chemicals, creating wastelands and dead rivers.
In most cases, this labelling is a legal, if misleading, way of manufacturers creatively interpreting the World Trade Organisation's "rules of origin". To get around country quotas established by the US and Europe, manufacturers find creative ways of ensuring that a garment can be finished in one country, when it was actually made in several others. Your jeans have travelled through dozens of hands in half-a-dozen countries before they get to you: their carbon footprint may be bigger than yours.
The average pair of jeans, according to Snyder, costs $20 to produce, whether you pay $25 or $225 for them. The difference is marketing and distribution costs.
There are rare exceptions: for example, Gap, Levis, Patagonia and Edun (a brand created by Ali Hewson) all monitor the production of their jeans, to ensure the environment is unharmed and that workers are not exploited and their lives even enhanced. Edun jeans go one step further by employing workers in sub-Saharan Africa. Snyder's book is a good place to start educating yourself on a complex issue so you can decide for yourself.
Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade (WW Norton & Company, £15.99 UK)