Hello readers and welcome back to the discussion severe health impacts in the garment and textile industry, where I will explain more about the health impacts from a socioeconomic lens.
Although I have listed quite a few ill (no pun intended) effects on workers in my previous post, little to no action is being taken. Companies offshore their production not only due to cheap labour costs but also due to the lax environmental regulations where there is no need for pollution mitigation. This not only means that workers are barely earning a liveable wage, but are also risking their lives in the process.
Workers pulling apart cotton to be woven (Source)
The effects of human exploitation go beyond the workers themselves. In the agricultural sector of the textile industry, heavy use of agrochemicals cause a multitude of problems. This insecticides, herbicides and fungicides cause fertility and neurological issues, resulting in infertility, miscarriages and birth defects as well as death. Birth defects bring even bigger problems to these workers’ families as they need even more money to support the health needs of their ill children. This reinforces the viciousness of the poverty cycle. It’s not just about simply “earning more”. The social impacts are far too dire to ignore. Real people in these low income nations are struggling to break out of this cycle by taking up jobs provided by these corporations, yet end up digging themselves in even deeper.
The health impacts cannot be underestimated as it hurts the generations that follow. Drinking water is reduced and groundwater polluted. The fast fashion industry is exploiting these countries blatantly in all aspects of life. Their people, their environment, their development is all put on hold for the sake of consumerism by the privileged and wealthy.
While the fast fashion industry harms the environment in a plethora of ways, the manner in which it poisons human life is what hits the hardest for me. I hope this post puts into perspective the effect of our shopping habits on real life people, whose lives are at stake.
That’s all for today, stay tuned for my next post and see you soon.
♡, Qystina
Sources:
Henry, B., Laitala, K., & Klepp, I. G. (2019). Microfibres from apparel and home textiles: Prospects for including microplastics in environmental sustainability assessment. Science of the Total Environment, (652), 483-494.
Mukherjee, S. (2015). Environmental and Social Impact of Fashion: Towards an Eco-friendly, Ethical Fashion. International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (IJIMS), 2(3), 22-35.
Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T., & Gwilt, A. (2020). The environmental price of fast fashion. Nature Reviews, 1, 189-200.