The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being - Softcover

Baker, Nena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865477469 ISBN 13: 9780865477469

Publisher: North Point Press, 2009

Synopsis

We are running a collective chemical fever that we cannot break. Everyone everywhere now carries a dizzying array of chemical contaminants, the by-products of modern industry and innovation, that contribute to a host of developmental deficits and health problems in ways just now being understood. These toxic substances, unknown to our grandparents, accumulate in our fat, bones, blood, and organs as a consequence of womb-to-tomb exposure to industrial substances as common as the products that contain them. Almost everything we encounter―from soap to soup cans, computers to clothing―contributes to a chemical load unique to each of us. Scientists studying the phenomenon refer to it as "chemical body burden," and in The Body Toxic, the investigative journalist Nena Baker explores the many factors that have given rise to this condition.

About this title

Book Description

"This is it: The book that finally chronicles the chemical invaders tainting us and the environment . . . Any one of the chapters focusing on particular toxins (in weed killers, beauty products, cookware and computers) deserves an outraged movement."

From the Publisher

"[Baker's] profile of UC Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes is particularly engaging, for he is not only a star researcher and teacher but also an impassioned advocate who was opposed by the chemical industry after his work on pesticides showed scary impacts on frogs." --Steve Heilig, San Francisco Chronicle "A startling, disturbing and important piece of journalism . . . engrossing and essential reading." --Ron Slate "Important . . . [Baker] is one of the growing number of voices shouting for reform and environmental cleanup." --SheKnows.com "Chock full of chemical history and the politics that surround it . . . [Baker] not only confronts the major issues head-on, she tells a readable story and even throws in some manageable chemistry. No easy task." --Enviroblog

"Baker does a good job of tracing the Faustian bargain we have unwittingly made as a society . . . Baker is at her best as she exposes the feebleness of the most important law governing dangerous chemicals in the United States, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, and the Environmental Protection Agency's anemic attempts to reform it . . . the book serves as a useful demonstration of how the PR muscle of a powerful industry can browbeat its regulators into paralysis." --Chris Lydgate, Lake Oswego Review

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0865477469
• ISBN 13: 9780865477469
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288