More than 500 current and former employees of Delta Air Lines have sued Lands’ End over illnesses and health conditions they claim they acquired as a result of wearing the company’s clothing. According to the Associated Press, the plaintiffs include “flight attendants, customer service agents, ramp agents or anyone else required to wear the Passport Plum uniforms.”
The uniforms became standard issue at Delta after being released in May of 2018. Since that time, employees wearing the clothing have suffered from skin rashes, hair loss, and migraine headaches. They have also been diagnosed with low white blood cell counts and a variety of respiratory difficulties. Employees suffering these injuries reported their illnesses to Lands’ End and asked for action to be taken. The employees allege, however, that the company never recalled the uniforms or addressed the issue.
The manufacturing process for the uniforms includes the addition of chemical compounds to create clothing items that are resistant to odor, staining, static electricity, and wrinkles. Whether the presence of the chemicals in their clothing was ever disclosed to the workers was not made clear by the AP article. Lands’ End also declined to comment for the piece.
The matter is being litigated in the form of two separate class actions. The first class filed their lawsuit in October of last year with the second group of plaintiffs filing their lawsuit on the last day of December. With some 60,000 Delta employees wearing uniforms of one type or another, the contract is worth significant money to Lands’ End. If the company produced toxic clothing for one of the nation’s largest airlines however, one has to wonder what else they might have made that could be harming consumers in the general public without their knowledge.
