The Secret Life of Chemicals [Paperback] Poulos, Alfred

This book provides extensive information on the chemicals that inhabit our environment, our food, our water and our air and the impact that they may be having on human health. The author is a medical scientist, with training in the law.

The book documents current understanding about pesticides in food, the plastics revolution, toxic metals, air, water and electronic waste pollutants, chemical exposure in the workplace, radiation pollutants, chemical exposure and hearing loss, how our bodies deal with chemicals, genetic variability and the risk of disease, the effect of chemicals on genes, mitochondria and the immune system and what we can do about it all.

Industrialisation has resulted in many thousands of chemicals, which are being continuously developed and often escaping from where they are used into our human environment, without us really knowing enough about them. In high dosages or with continuous small dosage, the evidence suggests, that many of them couldinterfere with human health and some of them are known to be doing so.  But for the vast majority, we are left wondering   whether some could be responsible for some diseases the causes of which are inadequately understood.  Every chapter is thoroughly reinforced with several pages of references from the peer-reviewed literature.

Alfred Poulos has a PhD from London University, a law degree from Adelaide University and a professorship from Adelaide University, for his research into genetic diseases, fats and fat metabolism. He held the position of Chief Medical Scientist at the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, for many years and has published over 150 papers in the international scientific and medical journals. He is a current member of the Human Research Ethics Committee of Alfred Health in Melbourne, reviewing medical and other health-related research projects. While Professor Poulos’ medical and scientific research has been wide and varied, it has chiefly focused on the role fats play in health and disease. His recent interests are in nutrition, and in the chemical pollutants present in our food, water and the environment. This interest led to his publication of The Silent Threat, a book that provides consumers with information on the source of many of these chemicals aswell as their possible effects on our health.