How is today’s leather industry working?
To convert an animal skin into leather which meets the requirements of the shoe industry, the skins today are often tanned with harmful chrome salts and the surface is laminated with plastics. Chrome tanning takes only a few hours and is therefore the quickest and cheapest method of tanning. It is performed using trivalent chromium salt that in high concentration can cause allergic reactions. Under particular circumstances, trivalent chromium salt can transform into hexavalent chromium salt, which is 1000 times as toxic as trivalent chromium salt. It is possible that sweat on the skin causes this transformation. Moreover, the waste water resulting from chrome tanning (as well as other by-products) considerably pollutes our soil and water. The substances that remain in the leather and get “under our skin” are largely unknown. Furthermore, to conceal possible irregularities like, for instance, scars, growth marks or insect stings, the leather is treated with a synthetic material like pol
