Synthetic Fibers

Plastic is made by hydrogenating oil, most commonly vegetable oil, while subjecting it to high heat. Aajonus described the discovery of plastic as accidental: a chemist fell asleep during a hydrogenation process and woke to find the oil had hardened into a solid plastic substance. The process was then refined and industrialized. The key chemical fact, repeated throughout his talks, is that hydrogenated vegetable oil has an identical molecular structure to plastic. The longer the hydrogenation continues and the higher the heat applied, the harder the resulting plastic becomes.

Rayon is a specific case Aajonus addressed repeatedly because the industry markets it as a natural fiber on the basis that it originates from pine needles or pine trees. He rejected this framing entirely. To convert pine needle resin into a spinnable fiber, manufacturers must break the resin down to a powder, treat it with polymers and plastic resins to bind it, and subject it to industrial chemical processes. The resin in pine is a heavy, thick, crystallized substance that is already chemically similar to plastic in its natural state. When hydrogenated, it becomes plastic. Aajonus's test was simple: burn a piece of rayon. Cotton, silk, and wool burn to ash. Rayon burns to a hard plastic ball. That outcome, he said, is the only confirmation needed. Whatever the raw material's origin, if it burns to a plastic ball, it is a plastic and will behave as one in the lungs.

Hemp and bamboo were also addressed. Hemp contains heavy vegetable tars and crystallizing vegetable oils that do not break down well in the human body. Bamboo fiber requires chemical softening because bamboo is too hard to be spun directly into fabric, and because bamboo has a tendency to mold, manufacturers treat it with anti-mold compounds, predominantly formaldehyde. He categorized bamboo fabric as a harmful synthetic for this reason, despite its marketing as a natural product.

Every synthetic fabric contains two classes of chemical agents that Aajonus identified as the primary sources of toxicity: polymers and dioxins.

Polymers are adhesive binding agents used to hold synthetic fibers together. They are essentially industrial glues. Aajonus used glue sniffers as a comparison: people who inhale polymer-based glues suffer neurological damage, brain deterioration, and chronic impairment because the nervous system cannot clear the polymer residues. When a person breathes synthetic lint, the same polymer compounds enter the body through the lungs and sinuses, and the body must dissolve them through the same chemical pathways. During dissolution, the polymer breaks down into its constituent chemical derivatives, including ether and other toxic compounds, which then circulate through the system.

Dioxins were introduced into plastics deliberately, and this point was central to Aajonus's account of the plastic industry's history. When plastic was first manufactured, it molded within six to twelve months because vegetable oil, being a biological substance in origin, remained susceptible to fungal growth. Manufacturers could not sell a product that deteriorated that quickly. They spent years attempting to solve this problem through heat treatment alone, but nothing worked. Eventually the industry created dioxins, which are among the most carcinogenic substances known, specifically to poison the mold that was destroying plastic. These dioxins were introduced directly into all plastics to prevent mold from growing. As a consequence, every piece of plastic, including every synthetic fabric, contains dioxins as an intentional ingredient. When the body breaks down a synthetic fiber inhaled into the lungs, it releases these dioxins into the body.

Aajonus described PCBs and phthalates in the same category. Breathing plastic lint means breathing polymers, PCBs, dioxins, and phthalates. He also noted that synthetic fibers can contain sodium fluoride, which he identified as a rat and insect poison used in water fluoridation, meaning a baby sleeping on synthetic bedding or clothing is inhaling not only polymer and dioxin residue but also this additional toxin with every breath.

When a synthetic fiber enters the lungs, the body must attempt to digest it in place, since it cannot expel a microscopic fiber through coughing or mucosal transport the way it can manage some natural fibers. Natural fibers such as silk, cotton, and wool, when breathed in, can sometimes be encapsulated in mucus and transported out of the respiratory tract or carried to the intestinal tract for elimination without requiring full digestion. Synthetic fibers cannot be handled this way because the polymers do not transfer through mucus in the same manner.

The digestion of a plastic fiber inside the lung releases all of the chemicals that composed it. Aajonus described this as equivalent to eating epoxy inside the lung tissue. The body responds by sending fat molecules and white blood cells to surround and isolate the fiber. Minerals are drawn to the site to help dry out the material. The body attempts to eliminate the residue, but the breakdown products are themselves toxic chemical compounds. If the body cannot eliminate the accumulated residue, it stores it in fatty tissue or other depositories within the body. Some accumulations become so hardened and clumped that they cannot be removed from the body at all.

He stated that one single synthetic fiber entering the lungs can destroy five pores of lung tissue. The destruction is not proportional to quantity in a linear way; even a single fiber causes discrete structural damage to the surrounding lung tissue through the chemical dissolution process it triggers.

The body may also produce viruses in response to synthetic lint as a mechanism to assist in breaking down the material. Because the polymers that compose synthetic fibers were designed to be adhesive and molecularly resistant, the body must work at a molecular destructive level to break them down, and viral activity is one of the tools the body deploys in that process.

Aajonus connected chronic synthetic fiber exposure to lung cancer, esophageal cancer, throat cancer, nasal cancer, and asthma. He also connected polymer inhalation to neurological deterioration, since the polymer dissolution products affect the nervous system in ways analogous to glue sniffing.

He raised the prospect that the coming decades would see massive increases in lung damage, esophageal cancer, and related conditions because synthetic fiber exposure is so ubiquitous and so continuous. People are exposed not only through their own clothing but through rugs, carpets, drapes, upholstery, sheets, blankets, and the clothing of people around them. The lint from any piece of synthetic material is always present in the air of any space where that material is located.

He also described what happens when the body stores undissolvable plastic residue and cannot eliminate it: it builds fibroids, tumors, and other hard structures to contain the material. Cancer, in his framework, is the body's inability to dissolve and eliminate dead cells. Plastic in the system makes this already difficult process harder because plastic-contaminated cells are even more difficult to dissolve than normally dead cells. He described women as having some advantage here because fibroid development in the vaginal and uterine region, while damaging to sexual function, does not threaten life the way tumors in the prostate, lungs, or other areas do for men.

Aajonus returned to Vietnam repeatedly across multiple talks as a concrete epidemiological example of what he described as the consequences of mass synthetic fiber wearing. In the major Vietnamese cities, including Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Hanoi, Da Nang, and Nha Trang, he observed that virtually all women, with estimates ranging from 90% to nearly 100% depending on the specific city described, wore polyester and synthetic fabric clothing as their standard daily dress. The garments resemble what Westerners would recognize as pajamas, and they are worn as normal everyday clothing because they are inexpensive, easy to clean, and resistant to staining.

The men in these cities, by contrast, continued to wear cotton or silk. Aajonus observed that men wearing synthetic fabric were rare. The rate of lung cancer among women in Vietnam's major cities was, by his account, five times higher than anywhere else in the world, and this elevated rate applied to women specifically, not men, tracking directly with the gender disparity in synthetic fabric use. He interpreted this as a natural experiment that confirmed the mechanism he described: breathing synthetic lint continuously produces lung cancer at a dramatically elevated rate compared to populations wearing natural fibers.

He also noted that Vietnamese synthetic clothing is predominantly sourced from outside the country, with most of it coming from the United States rather than from China, which he found notable as a matter of trade economics.

He used this same observation for a comparison within the United States, noting that mobile home communities in Florida, where polyester clothing is extremely common among both men and women, represent a domestic parallel to the Vietnamese pattern.

Aajonus addressed the issue of children and synthetic fabric with particular urgency. Children's antibacterial blankets, which the medical and consumer industries marketed as protective tools against dangerous microbes, are made from synthetic plastic fibers. He described this as an inversion of the marketed benefit: the blankets expose children to continuous plastic lint inhalation, which he said would lead to asthma, emphysema, frequent colds and flus, and a lifetime of pharmaceutical dependency.

He described the process of lint from aging synthetic fabrics accelerating as the material breaks down, meaning older antibacterial blankets produce more lint than new ones and therefore expose children to increasing amounts of plastic fiber over time. Anyone who handles, washes, or cuddles with a child wrapped in synthetic fabric is also breathing the same lint.

He specifically warned against keeping babies or young children on any synthetic material, including fleece items that are not made from actual sheep's wool. He described a scenario involving a cat, a person named Chris, and a synthetic material-filled environment, pointing out that all living beings in the household would be breathing plastic lint from that material continuously.

The newsletter material he produced listed triclosan, an endocrine-disrupting chemical found in many synthetic antibacterial fabrics, as one of the specific toxic compounds in these products, alongside its effects on reproductive organs, sperm quality, and thyroid and reproductive hormones. Products he specifically named as containing triclosan included Merrell shoes, Sabatier chef's aprons, Dickies socks, Fruit of the Loom socks, Biofresh socks, and multiple Playskool children's toys.

Aajonus consistently recommended silk, cotton, linen, flax, and wool as the acceptable fiber alternatives. These materials, when breathed as lint, can be handled by the body's natural mucus systems in a way that synthetic fibers cannot. Natural fiber lint can be encapsulated in mucus and transported to the intestinal tract for elimination, or coughed out, without requiring full digestion within the lung tissue. The chemical byproducts of natural fiber breakdown are not toxic in the way that polymer and dioxin residue is.

He applied this principle to the entire household environment, not just clothing. He stated that his own home contained no synthetic rugs, no synthetic upholstery, no synthetic bedding, and no synthetic drapes. When he used rugs, they were wool or cotton. All furniture upholstery in his home was natural. He framed this as a basic protective measure available to anyone willing to replace synthetic household items.

He acknowledged that wool allergy exists but reframed it: a person who reacts to wool is not reacting to wool as an inherent toxin but is instead not producing enough mucus to protect the mucous membranes from the wool fiber itself. The solution is not to avoid wool in favor of synthetic alternatives but to improve mucus production.

Regarding silk, he noted that it and cotton are the simplest natural fibers because they require no chemical binding agents for fiber production. Cotton is spun directly; silk is unreeled from cocoons. Neither requires polymer adhesives, hydrogenation, or dioxin treatment.

He also described his own protective practice during airplane flights, which he identified as a high chemical exposure environment. He wore an organic cotton mask and layered a silk mask over it for flights. He specified that this combination was for airplane use and noted it was not sufficient for heavy chemical exposures.

Aajonus offered a practical field test for distinguishing natural from synthetic fabric: burn a small piece of the material. Natural fibers, including cotton, silk, and wool, burn completely to ash. Synthetic fibers, including rayon despite its pine tree marketing, burn to a hard plastic ball. He described the ball as extremely hard and solid. He said that imagining the lungs having to break down that plastic ball conveys the scale of the biological problem created by synthetic fiber inhalation. Any fabric that produces a plastic ball when burned is, in his framework, plastic and should be treated accordingly.

In one passage, Aajonus noted that unnatural fibers often contain aluminum. He connected this to aluminum's chemical property of holding materials in place and to its use in deodorants for the same reason. He described aluminum as being incorporated into synthetic fabric formulations as part of the binding and structural chemistry of those materials.