page_title: Indigo dye
section_title: Safety and the environment
hierarchical_section_title: Indigo dye / Safety and the environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Indigo-colored polluted water in Phnom-Penh, Cambodia, 2005
context_page_description: Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color. Historically, indigo was a natural dye extracted from the leaves of certain plants, and this process was important economically because blue dyes were once rare. A large percentage of indigo dye produced today, several thousand tons each year, is synthetic. It is the blue often associated with denim cloth and blue jeans.
context_section_description: Indigo has a low oral toxicity, with an LD₅₀ of 5000 mg/kg in mammals. In 2009, large spills of blue dyes had been reported downstream of a blue jeans manufacturer in Lesotho.
  The compound has been found to act as an agonist of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor.
caption: Indigo color water pollution in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2005
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