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Ultraprocessed clothing is bad for the environment and bad for you.
News broke in early November that the U.S. federal dietary guidelines might soon warn Americans against eating “ultraprocessed food.”
It’s far from a done deal — an advisory committee is merely examining the issue, with no action expected before 2025. But it’s still somewhat of a duh moment for the millions of people who, over the past two decades, have turned away from food that comes in instant packets, boxes, and cans, and toward things that come from the produce aisle or the farmers market. Recent research makes a strong case that — more than individual villains like sugar, corn syrup, trans fats, and salt — it’s the way all these ingredients and more are pounded, mixed, extruded, and stuffed into shelf-stable forms that lead to health problems and weight gain.
Michael Pollan — the author who brought you the mantra “Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants” — is arguably one of the biggest catalysts for the real food movement. In a lesson from his Masterclass on intentional eating, he warns against foods with “very long ingredient lists,” saying that “the simplest way to think about an ultraprocessed food is you can’t imagine making it at home.”
You’ve heard of fast food and its linguistic child: the environmental scourge that is fast fashion. I would like to add a new term to the health and environmental zeitgeist:
Ultraprocessed fashion.
In the early 2010s, I saw my own health and happiness vastly improve after overhauling my diet to eat whole, farm-fresh foods. But I wanted to take it further. I figured that if it matters to the environment and our health where we buy our food from, it might matter where we get other things, like beauty products, home goods, and fashion.
Still, for a long, the argument for U.S. shoppers in favor of buying more sustainable fashion — the kind of classic, durable pieces skillfully made of natural fibers by artisans and American factories — was largely an altruistic one. Sustainable fashion purchases were meant to benefit a cotton farmer in India you would never meet, to protect a river in Kenya you would never see, or support a community of craftspeople in Thailand you would never have the privilege of knowing.
Even more nebulous, arguments that purchasing this instead of that would prevent the release of (super rough estimate) a few pounds of invisible climate-polluting gas into the atmosphere have not proven to be a very strong motivator for shoppers. In survey after survey, consumers swear up and down that they care deeply about sustainability … as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them, cost more money, or look too crunchy.
That’s an impossible standard. Sustainable fashion, whether it takes the form of a 100% wool sweater from California, a hand-block-printed cotton sundress, or a naturally dyed button-down, is always going to be more expensive than its synthetic counterpart made in a sweatshop somewhere where the workers are cheap and the laws are loose. Neither does slow fashion keep up with TikTok trends, by definition.
I initially had a hard time connecting sustainable fashion to Western shoppers’ well-being beyond the argument that an overstuffed, chaotic closet full of fast fashion can’t be good for your mental health or time management. After all, we’re not eating our clothing, right?
That all changed in 2019, when I first heard that Delta Air Lines attendants were suing Lands’ End, the maker of their uniforms, saying the new clothes were making them sick.
If you could call any clothing ultraprocessed, it would be these uniforms. While old airline outfits were made of traditional wool suiting and cotton button-downs in staid colors, the uniforms introduced in the past decade or so at Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest all were made of synthetic blends. They came in super-saturated colors and were coated in layers of performance chemicals: flame retardants, Teflon for stain resistance, and formaldehyde-based wrinkle-free finishes. They were made fast and cheap by suppliers in countries with lax environmental standards.
As I reported in my book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick – and How We Can Fight Back, at every single one of those four major airlines, up to a quarter of the attendants reported having health reactions, including rashes and skin burns, breathing problems, hair loss, blurry vision, brain fog, and extreme fatigue. Some attendants had to be taken off their planes and brought to the ER. Though the lawsuit by Delta flight attendants didn’t move forward, in November of this year a jury awarded over $1 million to four American Airlines flight attendants who said their Twin Hill uniforms made them sick.
The next question that arises is: Is this happening to regular folks, too? And the answer is yes, but in more subtle and insidious ways. For example, the kinds of dyes used on synthetic materials like polyester (disperse dyes) are well-known to dermatologists to be common skin sensitizers. But many people may not know it’s clothing exacerbating their toddler’s eczema or setting off their own skin problems.
But the issue is more serious than just rashes, though rashes are often the first sign that something is wrong. Researchers and advocacy groups have tested fashion from well-known brands and counterfeits alike and found heavy metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium; endocrine disruptors like Bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, and per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS); biocides, pesticides, and fungicides; and known carcinogens like benzene, certain azo dyes, and formaldehyde. (This is an abbreviated list, by the way.)
We’ve known for a long time these chemicals end up in our water and environment. PFAS, a toxic class of chemicals used for imbuing synthetics with water resistance, has been found all over Mount Everest’s summit, for example. But what we’re increasingly seeing is that our fashion, like our diets, affects our physical health.
Take microfibers, which in Heatmap’s recent survey were deemed to be a problem by 61% of respondents, and an “extremely serious” problem by 25% of respondents. When microfibers come off our clothes in the wash or break off our clothes and become part of our house dust, they bring with them everything that is in and on clothing. Given that we’re ingesting microfibers every day, we are eating our clothes. We’re also breathing in their VOCs, and our sweat is pulling those chemicals out of fibers onto our skin, where they can be absorbed into our bloodstream.
One of the main reasons fashion has turned from a field-to-closet endeavor to a chemistry experiment is the same as for food: It’s more profitable to sell highly processed, branded products made exclusively from petrochemicals and with a lot of marketing promises than it is to sell traditional pieces made from natural materials.
This happens at both ends of the fashion spectrum. At the low end, as Shein has shown, you can grow your company at an unprecedented speed by sourcing huge volumes of $5 polyester minidresses from garment factories with dubious working conditions, according to numerous reports.
At the other end, a company can add proprietary, brand-name chemistry like Gore-Tex to outdoor gear and sell it at a huge markup. Just observe a bit currently going around on TikTok where a spouse or partner requests you wear your most expensive clothing to an event or to meet the parents, so you show up in hiking gear.
Sure, if you’re a professional fisherman plowing through rough seas for your catch, a first responder, or a scientist living in the Arctic, you may well need high-performance gear. But for the rest of us, it’s just aspirational marketing, kind of like drinking Gatorade while you’re on the couch watching football.
Like the food industry before it, the fashion industry’s focus when it comes to safe and non-toxic fashion has been on individual chemicals or classes of chemicals instead of the holistic picture. The (completely voluntary) standards used by some fashion brands and certifications will test a textile for a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of possible chemical substances in circulation, and if each is under the (often arbitrary) limit, the fashion piece will be declared safe.
This approach, however, doesn’t take into account how chemicals can mix to have synergistic effects on the same organs or cause the same health effects.
For example, it’s completely within the realm of possibility for one clothing item or outfit to have BPA, phthalates, and PFAS, each of which by itself wreaks havoc on our hormonal system, even in tiny, tiny amounts. Some of these chemicals are used to process fibers. Some chemicals such as finishes, dyes, and glues are used deliberately and are meant to stay in and on the fashion. Some chemicals are accidental contaminants, as fabrics and components flow through an opaque, unregulated, and just plain sloppy supply chain.
That then can affect everything from our reproductive system and energy levels to our skin appearance and weight. And all this while you’re trying to take care of your health by taking a hike or hitting the gym. It kind of reminds me of when cereal brands will brag about the vitamins they’ve added to their sugary, processed cereal.
What’s more, unlike food, cleaning products, and beauty products, clothing doesn’t come with a complete ingredient list. Anything under 5% of the weight of the product doesn’t have to be included. So what kind of finishes, dyes, threads, or contaminants are present in any piece of fashion is somewhat of a mystery.
When people ask me what they should buy or what they should clean out of their closets, I usually give them a list of things to look for and things to avoid — yes to natural fibers like cotton, wool, linen, bamboo rayon, and silk; no to toxic “vegan” leather polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other synthetics, which are more likely to contain hazardous or sensitizing chemicals; avoid neon bright colors and buy naturally dyed or undyed products when you can; don’t dry clean your clothes.
But a simpler way to think about it would be to avoid clothing and accessories that your grandparents would look askance at, just like Pollan has encouraged us to do at the grocery store. Wait, what is Pertex® 20D Diamond Fuse Ripstop nylon? Or a polyester Lycra® elastane blend with anti-odor technology? What does it mean when something has Durable Water Repellant? What is actually in Memory Foam™ or the smelly glue that bonds it to the bottom of a sneaker? Do you really believe that a piece of clothing that smells like gasoline out of the box is okay for your health — or for anyone’s health? Which sounds better to you: chromium-tanned leather or vegetable-tanned leather?
Sure, it may take a bit more time, skill, and investment than buying synthetic clothing that you drop off at the dry cleaner. But then again, so does making a nutritious meal from ingredients you get at the farmer’s market. And, I would argue, both are a core part of cultivating a healthier, more vibrant, community-oriented, and nurturing life.
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Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “super soaker” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the super soaker collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the super soaker collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the super soaker, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.
On tough questioning from the Senate, LA’s fires, and EV leases
Current conditions: Odd weather has caused broccoli and cauliflower plants to come up far too early in the UK • Another blast of Arctic air is headed for the Midwest • An air quality alert has been issued in Los Angeles due to windblown dust and ash.
Firefighters in Los Angeles are scrambling to make progress against the ongoing wildfires there before dangerous winds return. The Palisades and Eaton fires have now been burning for almost a week, charring nearly 40,000 acres, damaging more than 12,000 structures, and leaving at least 24 people dead. They are 13% and 27% contained, respectively. Residents who lost their homes are desperately trying to find new properties to rent or buy in a tight market, with reports of intense bidding wars as landlords hike rents. The economic toll of this disaster is estimated to be between $135 billion and $150 billion. Red flag warnings are in effect today, with critical fire conditions and extreme wind gusts forecast through Wednesday.
Red fire retardant on pool furniture. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A few updates on the incoming administration: President-elect Donald Trump tapped Ed Russo to run an advisory environmental task force. Trump said Russo will oversee “initiatives to create great jobs and protect our natural resources, by following my policy of CLEAN AIR and CLEAN WATER. Together, we will achieve American Energy DOMINANCE, rebuild our Economy, and DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Russo is a longtime Trump loyalist who served as an environmental consultant to the Trump Organization and wrote a book titled “Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero”.
Trump also announced his deputies for some key environmental and energy Cabinet positions over the weekend, including:
More than a dozen of Trump’s Cabinet nominees face Senate confirmation hearings this week. Doug Burgum, who is up for interior secretary, has a hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources tomorrow. Energy secretary nominee Chris Wright has one on Wednesday. EPA nominee Lee Zeldin has one with the Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday.
Affordable EV leases are “the car market’s hottest deal,” according toThe Wall Street Journal. Car companies are changing the way they pitch EVs to buyers, offering short-term leases with low monthly payments. These deals are attractive to first-time EV shoppers who are still a little bit hesitant to commit, as well as people on a tighter budget. Roughly 45% of EV transactions at the end of 2024 were leases, much higher than the auto industry as a whole. And a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act means leased cars can more easily qualify for the government’s $7,500 EV tax credit. “The proliferation of lease deals has made EVs more accessible to buyers who couldn’t afford their higher sticker prices,” the Journal said. “For the automakers, it is helping get more EVs into customers’ hands after a choppy start for their electric-car operations.”
Wind power could overtake coal in Europe for electricity generation for the first time this year, according to the energy think tank Ember. At the end of 2024, wind power was closing in on coal, coming in at just 4% below the fossil fuel in power generation as the continent’s coal plants close. “That output gap could easily be made up over the course of 2025 by an increase in regional wind generation capacity or by higher average wind speeds at turbine level, or by some combination of both,” Reutersreported. Last year wind power accounted for 20% of electricity consumed in the EU, and the goal is to get that up to 50% by 2050. But as Electreknoted, the same problems plaguing projects in the U.S. – permitting delays and connection bottlenecks – are slowing things down. The EU accounts for 4.6% of global power sector emissions.
The World Health Organization’s European Centre for Environment and Health has issued a callout for “examples of interventions to protect and promote mental health in the face of climate change.” The group wants to take stock of these interventions so that it can identify gaps in mental health care and share some best practices. The callout is aimed at Europe only, but it is indicative of a growing awareness of how the worsening climate crisis is taking a toll on mental health worldwide.
“There’s a lot of finger-pointing going around, and I would just try to emphasize that this is a really complex problem. We have lots of different responsible parties. To me, what has happened requires more of a rethink than a blame game.” –Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire researcher at Arizona State University, speaking to Heatmap about the spread of misinformation around the LA fires