The story of how Anne Lipscomb turned what might have been a devastating illness into inner wisdom to create an astonishingly adventurous, happy life after 14 years trapped inside her home with multiple chemical sensitivity.
An insider's account of how political pressure and corporate arm-twisting undermined the Environmental Protection Agency, with devastating effects on public safety and the environment.
In today's world, everyone carries a toxic load of dozens of industrially produced chemicals in their bloodstream. Not only do these adversely affect the health of adults and children, but also, and more worryingly, they damage the development of unborn infants. The amniotic fluid of pregnant women has been found to contain a variety of chemicals, such as pesticides, plasticizers, disinfectant products, flame-retardants, surfactants and UV filters, many of which interfere with fetal physiology, especially thyroid hormone action. Thyroid hormone is vital for brain development, particularly for the fetus during pregnancy and for toddlers. In fact, children born to women who lack this thyroid hormone (or who are unwittingly exposed to thyroid-disrupting chemicals) have lower IQs and more neurodevelopmental problems. Evolution of the human brain has involved multiple changes and processes dependent on thyroid hormone. The urgent question thus arises: Is chemical pollution poisoning brain development and reversing evolution's most outstanding achievement: the human brain? And if so, as this book convincingly illuminates, what can be done about it both collectively and individually? Toxic Cocktail provides a clear view of how many environmental chemicals interfere with brain development. As a result, this book looks at how we define and test IQ, the evidence for IQ loss, and how chemical pollution and thyroid hormone disruption can be actors in this process, as well as increasing neurodevelopmental disease risk.
Deadly Greed An award-winning investigative journalist links the soaring epidemics of cluster illnesses and many other diseases to the chemical pollution of our water, air, food, and everyday products for the profit and power of a reckless few. With irrefutable evidence and moving personal stories of the sick and dying, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel demonstrates that the human equivalent of global warming is already upon us. She shows how governments of both parties operate in tandem with America's most notorious polluters and how they have deceived the public, buried evidence of spreading disease, and suppressed critical scientific data. She traces relationships between organizations whose products cause diseases and those who profit from diagnosing and treating them, as well as their efforts to avoid research into environmental causes and possible cures. Poisoned Nation is an urgent call for action that delineates the problem with such clarity that the truth shines through. The author issues a plea to religious leaders of all faiths to work together for change, to create a public health movement to defeat greed and guide us toward a safer, healthier future.
Beginning with the general rule of pollutiuon, the book discusses the major areas of pollution like air, water, soil and how thermal radiation and noise pollution are casting a deletirious impact on man and his environment, posing a danger to all living beings.
Although industrialization and modernization have dramatically improved the quality of our lives, they have also largely contributed to the destruction of our natural resources by engendering waste and creating depletion through overuse. As the worlds population continues to grow and consume, litter, chemicals, and a host of other harmful products overrun our land, air, and water. This intriguing volume examines the various pollutants and human activities that threaten the natural world, with a special look at deforestation and desertification.
The climate change reckoning looms. As scientists try to discern what the Earth’s changing weather patterns mean for our future, Rachel Rothschild seeks to understand the current scientific and political debates surrounding the environment through the history of another global environmental threat: acid rain. The identification of acid rain in the 1960s changed scientific and popular understanding of fossil fuel pollution’s potential to cause regional—and even global—environmental harms. It showed scientists that the problem of fossil fuel pollution was one that crossed borders—it could travel across vast stretches of the earth’s atmosphere to impact ecosystems around the world. This unprecedented transnational reach prompted governments, for the first time, to confront the need to cooperate on pollution policies, transforming environmental science and diplomacy. Studies of acid rain and other pollutants brought about a reimagining of how to investigate the natural world as a complete entity, and the responses of policy makers, scientists, and the public set the stage for how societies have approached other prominent environmental dangers on a global scale, most notably climate change. Grounded in archival research spanning eight countries and five languages, as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies is the first book to examine the history of acid rain in an international context. By delving deep into our environmental past, Rothschild hopes to inform its future, showing us how much is at stake for the natural world as well as what we risk—and have already risked—by not acting.
Whelan beats a putrescent, but live, kicking and spewing horse: the media--both print and broadcast--and its promotion of hysteria over carcinogens in every package, teratogens in every breath. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR