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Raising animals for food and
leather requires huge amounts of feed crop and
pastureland, water, and fossil fuels. Animals on
factory farms produce 130 times as much excrement
as the entire human population, without the
benefit of waste treatment plants. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has even
acknowledged that livestock pollution is the
greatest threat to our waterways.
Although some leather makers deceptively tout
their products as "eco-friendly,"
turning skin into leather also requires massive
amounts of energy and dangerous chemicals,
including mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar
derivatives, and various oils, dyes, and finishes,
some of them cyanide-based. Most leather produced
in the U.S. is chrome-tanned; all wastes
containing chromium are considered hazardous by
the EPA. Tannery effluent contains large amounts
of pollutants, such as salt, lime sludge,
sulfides, and acids. The process of tanning
stabilizes the collagen or protein fibers in skins
so that they actually stop biodegrading so that
leather doesn't rot right off your feet.
Additionally, to raise the animals whose skin
eventually becomes leather, trees are cleared to
create pastureland, vast quantities of water are
used, and feedlot and dairy-farm runoff create a
major source of water pollution. Huge amounts of
fossil fuels are consumed in livestock production.
(By contrast, plastic wearables account for only a
fraction of the petroleum used in the U.S.)
People who work in and live near tanneries suffer
too. Many are dying from cancer caused by exposure
to toxic chemicals used to process and dye the
leather. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that the incidence of leukemia
among residents in an area near one tannery in
Kentucky was five times the U.S. average. Arsenic,
a common tannery chemical, has long been
associated with lung cancer in workers who are
exposed to it on a regular basis. Studies of
leather-tannery workers in Sweden and Italy found
cancer risks "between 20% and 50% above
[those] expected."
Wearing leather hurts animals, the environment,
and the people who produce it. The only ones who
benefit are the people who profit from the misery
and suffering of others.
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