Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health - Hardcover

Wargo, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110375 ISBN 13: 9780300110371

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

We live in a world awash in manmade chemicals, from the pesticides on our front lawns to the diesel exhaust in the air we breathe. Although experts are beginning to understand the potential dangers of these substances, there are still more than 80,000 synthetic compounds that have not been sufficiently tested to interpret their effects on human health. Yale University professor John Wargo has spent much of his career researching the impact of chemical exposures on women and children. In this book, he explains the origins of society’s profound misunderstanding of everyday chemical hazards and offers a practical path toward developing greater “green intelligence.”

Despite the rising trend in environmental awareness, information about synthetic substances is often unavailable, distorted, kept secret, or presented in a way that prevents citizens from acting to reduce threats to their health and the environment. By examining the histories of five hazardous technologies and practices, Wargo finds remarkable patterns in the delayed discovery of dangers and explains the governments’ failures to manage them effectively. Sobering yet eminently readable, Wargo’s book ultimately offers a clear vision for a safer future through prevention, transparency, and awareness.

About this title

About the Author

John Wargo is professor of environmental policy, risk analysis, and political science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Political Science at Yale University. The author of Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, he has been an adviser to Vice President Al Gore, the U.S. Congress, the U.N. World Health Organization, and other institutions.

Reviews

On the morning of April 8, 1951, a group of American dignitaries visiting Runit Island in the South Pacific watched as a blinding white light filled the sky, followed by a yellow and red fireball that vaporized millions of tons of water, mud, plant and animal life into radioactive mist and debris. Within 15 seconds, the conflagration was over, but the damage the nuclear experiment unleashed on the Marshall Islands would last generations. It is from this dramatic focal point that Wargo, a Yale University professor, paints his distressing landscape of modern ecology, further coloring it with the histories of three other pernicious practices that have changed the chemistry of the planet and our bodies: the use of modern-day pesticides, the consumption of vehicle emissions and the widespread adoption of plastics. Wargo reveals how information about synthetic substances has been distorted and kept secret preventing people from taking action to reduce threats to their health. Though Wargo sometimes skirts a general sentiment of helplessness in the face of industrial and governmental actions, he punctuates the book with ways in which people can take back long-violated environments and reclaim their ecological well-being.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300110375
• ISBN 13: 9780300110371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400