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W h a t | W h y | H o w | W h i c h
W h a t | W h y | H o w | W h i c h

SWITCHBACK time

The irony is — even while we are losing touch with the craft of mak-ing natural colours — awareness about the benefits of natural dyes is gaining ground.

Why? Because we have just begun to calculate the price that we pay for using chemical dyes. Its huge and, most frighteningly, it cannot be measured in terms of money. Let us take a look.

Cost of Colour
Colour is used as a basic ingredient by a host of industries — textiles, leather, glassware, plastics and even food. And all of them use syn-thetic colour. So the volume of pro-duction is truly gigantic!

How does this affect our envi-ronment?
Listen to the tale of one polluted city. Ankleshwar in Gujarat. It is one of the largest chemical indus-trial centres in Asia, and all the plants here use dyes. Impact? Tubewells yield water that is blood red in colour. A large number of borewells across the city have been abandoned. The soil in and around Ankleshwar has taken on a blackish tinge — a sure fire sign of chemical pollution — and has become infertile.

Ankleshwar is by no means an isolated case. Synthetic dyes have emerged as a serious threat to the air, soil and water around us.

This is how the slow poison-ing takes place:

1. The dyeing process requires water. But while chemical colours are manufactured many harmful compounds are released directly to the river, lake or the ground.

2. Dyes and polymers, which have large and complex mole-cules, are difficult to biodegrade.

The natural environment can nei-ther recognise synthetic dyes nor remove their toxicity. So in terms of toxicity dye industries rank sec-ond after the pesticides.

3. Dyes contain metals — mer-cury, nickel and chromium —which are difficult to remove from the wastewater released after pro-duction.

4. When effluents from dye industries are released into lakes and rivers, these also take on the tinge. This blocks off sunlight and can do great harm to fish, other aquatic creatures and plants.

5. Small amounts of these dyes percolating into the soil can damage it permanently.

HOW does this affect our health?

We are constantly exposed to synthetic dyes. Some times indirectly—through fruits, vegeta-bles, crops, fish—which absorb chemical pollu-tants from land and soil and then transfer these to our bodies via the food chain. But our daily encounter with colours (of the harmful kind!) isfar more direct and lethal than this.
Read on.

Food
Biscuits with a dab of orange cream and green ice cream bars. Colours add zest to food. They also put dyes into our bodies. Synthetic dyes have been used in various food items from 1900. The manu-facturers prefer chemical dyes because these have stronger hues and hence look more tempting. In 1937, the dye ‘butter yel-low’ (dimethylazobenzene) was found to cause cancer in rats.

Cosmetics
You are exposing yourself if you use hair dyes. In 2001, researchers at the University of Southern California found that people using permanent dyes could double or treble their risk of developing blad-der cancer. Women who dye their hair for 20 years or more are twice more susceptible to rheumatoid arthritis than those who do not.

Clothes Clothes
The red T-shirt you like so much might be making you sick! Dermal absorption – that is, absorption through the skin – is also a major route through which dye can enter the human system. Recently the European Union put a ban on the import of all products, which use azo dyes.
Aromatic amines (a compound from which azo dyes are derived) cause cancer. They are also toxic and may trigger allergic reactions.

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