Families in the Italian provinces of Vicenza, Verona and Padua are suffering from long-term health problems due to water contamination as the result of the global fashion industry, the Financial Times reported on Friday. It was in the 1960s that a textile group installed a research center in the town of Trissino in order to produce chemicals known colloquially as PFAS to make waterproof garments. But the negative side effects to peoples' health and the environment caused by the fashion industry are not contained to Italy alone.

Fast fashion can be described as cheap, trendy clothing that takes ideas from high fashion brands or designers and gets those styles into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible. Fast fashion brands usually have hundreds to thousands of styles that are “trendy”, produce their clothes cheaply in manufacturing facilities where workers are paid severely low wages without labor rights to protect them, and create clothing that is made from cheap, low quality materials. “Today a Shein item costs even less than a sandwich.

.. businesses can produce this fast and this cheap only because they use exploited labor and use cheap fossil fuel-based fibers,” says Eco-Age co-founder Livia Giuggioli Firth.

The Financial Times report found that about 20% of global water pollution can be attributed to the dyeing and finishing processes of clothing garments in the fashion industry. Meanwhile, simply washing one’s own clothes made from polyester can discharg.