PROLOGUE

  1  “What most struck me”: Alan Riding, “1,800 Objects from the Titanic: Any Claims?” New York Times, December 16, 1992.

  2  The Synthetic Century: See Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin Press, 2006). See also Douglas Fischer, “The Great Experiment,” the second part of a three-part series in the Oakland Tribune, March 10, 2005.

  3  By the end of the Second World War: New York Times, May 16, 1940.

  4  The trouble with: U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Toxic Pollution and Health: An Analysis of Toxic Chemicals Released in Communities Across the United States,” March 2007, p. 4.

  5  And since these chemicals: “I have no doubt that some of these things that we’re discovering out there have been there since the dawn of the plastic era in the 1950s,” Moore told CBS News. For sea animals—birds, fish, seals—“it’s like putting them on a plastic diet. It becomes part of their tissue.” By some estimates, plastic kills a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals a year. Rob Krebs, a spokesman for the American Plastics Council, counters that just because plastic is everywhere, “it shouldn’t be the whipping boy of environmentalists. It’s good material, and so when we talk about Charles Moore, we really need to look in the mirror. We need to look at ourselves.” “Sailing the Seas of Trash: Vast Area of Pacific Ocean Polluted with Plastic,” CBS News, January 6, 2004; KQED, August 22, 2008. See also Alan Weisman, “Polymers Are Forever, Orion, May–June, 2007.

  6  I was born: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), pp. 28–30.

  7  Carson’s book was savaged: “Rachel Carson Dies of Cancer; ‘Silent Spring’ Author Was 56,” New York Times, April 15, 1964.

  8  In addition to pesticides: Anita Lahey, “Unsafe Assumption,” Canadian Geographic, May–June 2003.

  9  In short, the middle decades: Michael T. Kaufman, “Waldo Semon Dies at 100; Chemist Who Made Vinyl,” New York Times, May 28, 1999.

10  By 2004, the U.S. chemical industry: Nena Baker, The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being (New York: North Point Press, 2008), pp. 39–40. See also Katharine Mieszkowski, “Plastic Bags Are Killing Us,” Salon, August 10, 2007; Elizabeth Royte, “A Fountain on Every Corner,” New York Times, May 23, 2008; Athanasios Valavanidis et al., “Persistent Free Radicals, Heavy Metals and PAHs Generated in Particulate Soot Emissions and Residue Ash from Controlled Combustion of Common Types of Plastic,” Journal of Hazardous Materials, vol. 156, nos. 1–3 (August 15, 2008), pp. 277–84.

11  In 1990, the National Academy of Sciences: Anita Lahey, “Unsafe Assumption,” Canadian Geographic, May–June 2003. See also Yana Kucker and Meghan Purvis, “Body of Evidence: New Science in the Debate over Toxic Flame Retardants and Our Health,” National Association of State PIRGs and Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2004.

12  Every day, the United States: Michael Wilson, with Daniel A. Chia and Bryan Ehlers, “Green Chemistry in California: A Framework for Leadership in Chemicals Policy and Innovation,” California Policy Resource Center, University of California, 2006. You can find the report at www.ucop.edu/cprc/.

13  Here’s the problem: Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p. 92.

14  To be sure: Douglas Fischer, “The Great Experiment,” Oakland Tribune, March 10, 2005.

15  In the spring of 2010: Nicholas Kristof, “Do Toxins Cause Autism?” New York Times, February 25, 2010.

16  Today, despite vast sums: Indeed, figuring out how to get people to live longer with cancer is not the same thing as reducing the number of people who get cancer in the first place. In 1971, President Richard Nixon—fresh off watching an American walk on the moon—signed the National Cancer Act, pledging to find a cure for cancer within five years. He did not ask the country to reconsider its exposure to tobacco, or industrial chemicals, or asbestos, or synthetic consumer products. He pushed the War on Cancer more as something the country could rally behind—as opposed, say, to the war on the ground in Vietnam. Since then, the National Cancer Institute alone has spent $105 billion on cancer research, and this is just a part of the total spent by the government, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and charitable groups. Although cancer therapies and early diagnoses have improved some cancer survival rates, the overall death rate for cancer, adjusted for the size and age of the population, has dropped by just 5 percent from 1950 to 2005. By comparison, the death rate for heart disease has dropped by 64 percent, and for flu and pneumonia by 58 percent. Some scientists and public health experts worry that the much-ballyhooed search for a cancer “cure” has led to a widespread delusion: however bleak the diagnosis, some people believe miracle drugs or the latest technology will somehow be there to save them. A Herblock cartoon, printed in the Washington Post in 1977, shows a harried cancer researcher bent over a microscope, flanked by a fearsome gang of industry representatives from Big Tobacco, Big Chemical, and Big Asbestos. Meanwhile, a government official begs the scientist, “Could you hurry and find a cure for cancer? That would be so much easier than prevention.” See Richard Horton, “Cancer: Malignant Maneuvers,” a review of Devra Davis’s The Secret History of the War on Cancer, in the New York Review of Books, March 6, 2008. See also Gina Kolata, “In Long Drive to Cure Cancer, Advances Have Been Elusive,” New York Times, April 24, 2009. The Herblock cartoon is reprinted in Davis’s book on p. 198.

17  And while cancer seems: Yana Kucker and Meghan Purvis, “Body of Evidence: New Science in the Debate over Toxic Flame Retardants and Our Health,” National Association of State PIRGs and Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2004. See also David Kohn, “Body Wars,” Baltimore Sun, June 5, 2008; Felicity Barringer, “Exposed to Solvent, Worker Faces Hurdles,” New York Times, January 24, 2009; Evelyn Hess, “Environmental Chemicals and Autoimmune Disease: Cause and Effect,” Toxicology, vols. 181–82 (2002).

18  The deeper one looks: Environmental Defense Fund, Toxic Ignorance: The Continuing Absence of Basic Health Testing for Top-Selling Chemicals in the United States. For the full report, see www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/243_toxicignorance.pdf.

19  Those “ingredients” lists: See www.dtsc.ca.gov/hazardouswaste/perchlorate/.

20  Pick up a can: “EPA Probes Suspected Link Between Household Chemical, Feline Hyperthyroidism,” DVM Newsmagazine, vol. 38, no. 10 (October 2007). See also “Cats and Dogs Harbor Higher Rates of Certain Chemicals Than Their People Do,” National Public Radio, All Things Considered, April 17, 2008.

21  “Information,” such as it is: Mark Schapiro, “Toxic Inaction: Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up in Our Blood,” Harper’s, October 2007.

22  “The effects don’t just accumulate”: Along with the dark trends, of course, are astonishing gains in medical research and in cancer survival rates. In 1978, Richard Horton notes, there were 3 million cancer survivors. By 2005, there were 10 million. Breast cancer rates began to decline in 2003, perhaps because of the mass abandonment of hormone-replacement therapy. And new kinds of treatments for diseases, like monoclonal antibodies for colorectal cancer, are prolonging lives. There is a lot of money involved in these issues, Horton reminds us. Oncology has become very big business. The chemical industry, after all, is not the only powerful force in Washington. The pharmaceutical industry also leans on Congress, which then leans on the FDA to minimize government monitoring of the potentially harmful ingredients in everything from body lotions to pharmaceutical drugs and dietary supplements. Ritalin, for example, a drug taken by one in ten kids at some point in their lives, may cause liver tumors and genetic damage, Horton notes. Yet the FDA has taken no action, and the drug remains ubiquitous. See Devra Davis, “A Thousand Threats: Cancer-Causing Chemicals Don’t Work Alone, but in Tandem,” Newsweek International, March 5, 2007. See also Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream, p. 32, and Richard Horton, “Cancer: Malignant Maneuvers,” New York Review of Books, March 6, 2008, p. 25. The figures for cancer deaths are from the American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts and Figures 2006, pp. 1, 22. A pdf of the report can be found at www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/CAFF2006PWSecured.pdf.

23  More questions: What role: See www.epa.gov/oppbead1/pestsales/01pestsales/usage2001.htm.

24  More recently, experts say: Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream, pp. 20–21, 28. See also Ruth A. Lowengart et al., “Childhood Leukemia and Parents’ Occupational and Home Exposures,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 79, no. 1 (July 1987), and Martin Belson et al., “Risk Factors for Acute Leukemia in Children: A Review,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 115, no. 1 (January 2007).

CHAPTER ONE: THE BODY

  1  To make a point: Daniel Martineau et al., “Cancer in Wildlife: a Case Study; Beluga from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Quebec, Canada,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 110, no. 3 (March 2002). See also Robert Quiroz et al., “Analysis of PCB Levels in Snow from the Aconcagua Mountain (Southern Andes) Using the Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction,” Environmental Chemistry Letters, vol. 7, no. 3 (September 2009); Cynthia A. DeWit et al., “Levels and Trends of Brominated Flame Retardants in the Arctic,” Chemosphere, vol. 64, no. 2 (June 2006), pp. 209–33; Michael G. Ikonomou, Sierra Rayne, and Richard F. Addison, “Exponential Increases of the Brominated Flame Retardants, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, in the Canadian Arctic from 1981 to 2000,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 36, no. 9 (2002), pp. 1886–92, and P. O. Darnerud et al., “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers: Occurrence, Dietary Exposure, and Toxicology,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 109, supp. 1 (2001), pp. 49–68.

  2  “Our experience with”: M. LaGuardia, R. C. Hale, and E. Harvey, “Are Waste Water Treatment Plants Sources for Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers?” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), 2003.

  3  If lab science: See www.pops.int/documents/guidance/beg_guide.pdf.

  4  The Maine study was modest: “Body of Evidence: A Study of Pollution in Maine People,” Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine, June 2007; available at www.cleanandhealthyme.org.

  5  The truth is: Richard Horton, “Cancer: Malignant Maneuvers,” New York Review of Books, March 6, 2008.

  6  Given the immense: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Executive Summary,” National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, 2005. The full report can be found at www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/.

  7  The Maine study was not: To see the full multistate report, visit www.isitinus.org/documents/Is%20It%20In%20Us%20Report.pdf. Another useful site is www.chemicalbodyburden.org/. The Oregon report can be found at www.oeconline.org/our-work/kidshealth/pollutioninpeople. For the full Environmental Working Group “Pollution in Newborns” report, see archive.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/.

  8  The CDC began: The CDC study did little to interpret the data and came full of disclaimers. For one thing, even for chemicals suspected of being troublesome, it noted, “very limited scientific information is available on potential human health effects.” For another, the study was not designed to estimate exposure levels by city, or even by state. For yet another, being contaminated with toxic chemicals does not necessarily mean someone will become sick. “Just because people have environmental chemicals in their blood or urine does not mean that the chemical causes disease,” the CDC reported. “The toxicity of a chemical is related to its dose or concentration in addition to a person’s individual susceptibility. Small amounts may be of no health consequence, whereas larger amounts may cause adverse health effects.” See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Executive Summary,” National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, 2005; www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/.

  9  D. Richard Jackson: Nena Baker, The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being (New York: North Point Press, 2008), p. 25.

10  When it comes to scientific debates: Not surprisingly, industry’s push-back against body burden studies has been intense. “The Environmental Working Group: Peddlers of Fear,” shouted the headline on a release put out in January 2004 by the Capital Research Center, an industry group that “analyzes organizations that promote the growth of government.” The group accused the EWG of specializing in “junk science” to “foment health scares about various foods, pesticides and other products.” The essay accuses the group of being a “Trojan Horse for the Organic Food industry,” and says its attacks on synthetic chemicals are similar to those made in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which it calls “a misconceived attack on man-made chemicals.”

“Pesticides are a testimony to human ingenuity in the service of the most elementary human need: providing food to eat,” it continues. “There is no doubt that pesticides are one of the many innovations that have dramatically increased human life expectancy over the past few decades. But pesticides are EWG’s enemy.”

The article then makes a clever turn. By promoting pesticide-free agriculture, it argues, EWG is pushing the cost of cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables beyond the reach of “people of moderate or lower incomes.” Advocating for organic food, in other words, is “a sure way to raise the cancer risk of millions of people.”

“Because EWG uses its junk science–laden reports as fodder for class-action lawsuits, the organization has achieved an influence that far exceeds many better-known environmental organizations,” the report maintains. “But by focusing on a narrow range of hot topics and by playing fast and loose with the facts, EWG has proven adept at ‘turning raw data into useable information.’ It’s an effective voice for an irresponsible cause.” The report, by Bonner R. Cohen, can be found at www.capitalresearch.org.

11  Lauralee was not the only: “Body of Evidence: A Study of Pollution in Maine People,” Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine, June 2007; available at www.cleanandhealthyme.org.

12  The chemical industry chimed in: Josie Huang, “Study Finds 36 Toxic Chemicals in Bodies of Mainers Tested,” Portland Press Herald, June 12, 2007.

13  As word got out: Doug Harlow, “Starks: Demise of Birds Probed,” Kennebec Morning Sentinel, December 18, 2008.

14  Since it was invented: Rebecca Renner, “It’s in the Microwave Popcorn, Not the Teflon Pan,” Environmental Science and Technology News, November 16, 2005. In recent years, worries have cropped up over our remarkable exposure to the compounds, and the links between the chemicals and cancer and birth defects. Virtually every American is thought to have PFOAs in their blood, and by 2000, 3M was producing eight million pounds of PFOS (another perfluorinated chemical) a year. Unfortunately, the stuff was not staying put in carpets and pans. Researchers have begun finding PFOAs and PFOSs in the blood of everything from polar bears in the Arctic to cormorants in the Sea of Japan. DuPont recently paid $50 million in cash and $22 million in legal fees to settle a lawsuit brought by workers at a plant in West Virginia who claimed Teflon chemicals contributed to birth defects and other illnesses. (This raises an interesting etymological question: What would it mean, in this day and age, to refer to Ronald Reagan as the Teflon president?)

Under pressure from the EPA, 3M agreed to phase out PFOSs in 2000. Six years later, DuPont, 3M, and six other chemical companies signed a nonbinding, voluntary agreement with the EPA to reduce PFOAs by 95 percent by 2010, but the compounds are still being used to make Teflon pans and Gore-Tex clothing—the last of which gives pause to an outdoor enthusiast like Amy Graham. See John Butenoff, “The Applicability of Biomonitoring Data for Perfluorooctanesulfonate to the Environmental Public Health Continuum,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 114 (2006), pp. 1776–82; B. H. Alexander et al., “Mortality of Employees of a Perfluorooctanesulphonyl Fluoride Manufacuring Facility,” Occupational Environmental Medicine, vol. 60 (2003), pp. 722–29; and Chris Summers, “Teflon’s Sticky Situation,” BBC News, October 7, 2004.

15  But these little dolls: One phthalate, DEHP—di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate—was used in baby pacifiers and plastic food wrap until it was shown to be a probable carcinogen. It is still added to PVC pipe, to give it flexibility. But again, as with flame retardants, residues of DEHP have been found in food with high fat content, like eggs, milk, cheese, margarine, and seafood. See Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p. 112.

CHAPTER TWO: THE HOME

  1  How often do you use: “Study Finds Pesticide Link to Childhood Leukemia,” Agence France-Press, July 29, 2009.

  2  Cancer, it is true: Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York: Plume Books, 1996), p. 40.

  3  Donnay liked all of this: Judith Schreiber et al., “Apartment Residents’ and Day Care Workers’ Exposures to Tetrachloroethylene and Deficits in Visual Contrast Sensitivity,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 110, no. 7 (July 2002), pp. 655–64.

  4  Then we got to the bathrooms: D. Andrew Crain et al., “An Ecological Assessment of Bisphenol-A: Evidence from Comparative Biology,” Reproductive Toxicology, vol. 24 (2007), pp. 225–39; see also Sheela Sathyanarayana et al., “Baby Care Products: Possible Sources of Infant Phthalate Exposure,” Pediatrics, vol. 121, no. 2 (February 2008).

  5  In recent years: Some of these problems have begun showing up in the adult male populations as well. A 2000 analysis of more than one hundred clinical studies done between 1934 and 1996 by Dr. Shanna Swan, then at the University of Missouri, found that average sperm counts in Europe were dropping 3 percent a year; in the United States, it was 1.5 percent a year. The study found no such drop in nonindustrialized countries. The incidence of testicular cancer has also increased “significantly” in Caucasians in Western countries. Yet while the damage may be done to the male baby, the toxic chemicals are delivered through the bodies of the contaminated mothers. The CDC’s 2000 study found one phthalate, diethyl phthalate (DEP), in the bodies of every one of the women of childbearing age. See Swan et al., “The Question of Declining Sperm Density Revisited: An Analysis of 101 Studies Published 1934–1996,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, no. 10 (October 2000).

  6  Public health experts: Nathan Welton, “Embalming Toxins,” E: The Environmental Magazine, March–April 2003. See also John A. McLachlan et al., “Endocrine Disruptors and Female Reproductive Health,” Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, vol. 20, no. 1 (March 2006), pp. 63–75, and Jane Houlihan, Charlotte Brody, and Bryony Schwan, “Not Too Pretty,” Environmental Working Group, July 8, 2002.

  7  It is true that MCS: Pamela Reed Gibson, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Survival Guide (Oakland, Calif.: New Harbinger Publications, 2000), pp. 9–10, 35.

  8  “We are a culture”: Gibson, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, p. 163.

  9  In the mid-1990s: For more information about Donnay’s organization, see www.mcsrr.org.

10  But it’s not just air pollution: “FEMA Runs for Cover,” unsigned editorial, New York Times, July 22, 2007.

11  And so it is: K. Jakobsson, K. Thuresson, L. Rylander, A. Sjodin, L. Hagmar, and A. Bergman, “Exposure to Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers and Tetrabrombisphenol A Among Computer Technicians,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 709–16. See also A. Sjodin, L. Hagmar, E. Klasson-Wehler, K. Kronholm-Diab, E. Jakobsson, and A. Bergman, “Flame Retardant Exposure: Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Blood from Swedish Workers,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 107, no. 8 (August 1999), pp. 643–48; Hale et al., “Potential Role of Fire-Retardant-Treated Polyurethane Foam as a Source of Brominated Diphenyl Ethers to the US Environment,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 729–35; Bryony Wilford et al., “Passive Sampling Survey of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether Flame Retardants in Indoor and Outdoor Air in Ottawa, Canada: Implications for Sources and Exposures,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 38 (2004), pp. 5312–18; and Ruthann Rudel et al., “Phthalates, Alkylphenols, Pesticides, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, and Other Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds in Indoor Air and Dust,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 37, no. 20 (2003), pp. 4543–53.

12  The EPA has warned: Stephanie Desmon, “The Danger Inside,” Baltimore Sun, March 2, 2009, and Mary H. Ward et al., “Proximity to Crops and Residential Exposure to Agricultural Herbicides in Iowa,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 114, no. 6 (June 2006).

13  In 2003, a team of researchers: Ruthann Rudel et al., “Phthalates, Alkylphenols, Pesticides, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, and Other Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds in Indoor Air and Dust,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 37, no. 20 (2003), pp. 4543–53.

14  And the human inhabitants: National Public Radio, All Things Considered, April 17, 2008.

CHAPTER THREE: THE BIG BOX STORE

  1  Which, I suppose: “Top 10 U.S. Retailers: Walmart, Kroger and Costco Lead List,” Retail Info Systems News, December 15, 2009; available online at www.risnews.com.

  2  And in people?: In 2002, New York’s attorney general released a report showing that commercial pesticide workers had applied 4.1 million pounds of dry pesticides and 820,000 gallons of liquid pesticides to apartments, schools, parks, day care centers, senior centers, hospitals, offices, and office buildings across New York State. Home owners, landlords, and apartment dwellers purchased many additional thousands of pounds of pesticides for private application. The pesticides used in New York include carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, chemicals capable of causing birth defects, and chemicals that can cause brain damage. Among the findings: none of the schools surveyed warned parents or students about pesticide applications; and illegal or restricted pesticides were frequently for sale and in wide use, even by schools.

The attorney general’s survey discovered that some very dangerous pesticides are used by governmental agencies in places where people live, work, and play. For example, the New York City schools, the Syracuse schools, and the Albany Housing Authority used hydramethylnon, a pesticide classified by the U.S. EPA as a “possible carcinogen.” The Syracuse Housing Authority used Baygon, a “probable carcinogen.” All of these chemicals are applied in areas frequented by infants and children. By reducing or eliminating toxic pesticides, New York could save billions of dollars in health care costs each year, the report said.

See Michael H. Surgan, Thomas Congdon, et al., “Pest Control in Public Housing, Schools and Parks: Urban Children at Risk,” Environmental Protection Bureau, Office of the New York State Attorney General, August 2002. The full report can be found at www.oag.state.ny.us/bureaus/environmental/pdfs/pest_control_public_housing.pdf.

  3  Next to this was a can: See www.epa.gov/iaq/voc.html.

  4  Which, of course, is just: Manuela Gago-Dominguez et al., “Use of Permanent Hair Dyes and Bladder Cancer Risk,” International Journal of Cancer, vol. 91 (2001), pp. 575–79. Europe has banned the use of paradioxane in all personal care products and recently recalled all contaminated products. Not so the United States, where synthetic ingredients, in the words of one industry spokesman, are like “salt.”

“A little salt on your peas or tomatoes can be good,” says John Bailey, executive vice president for science of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association. “But a lot of salt can have adverse health effects on your blood pressure, and too much can be fatal.” See Devra Davis, “A Thousand Threats: Cancer-Causing Chemicals Don’t Work Alone, but in Tandem,” Newsweek International, March 5, 2007, and Natasha Singer, “Skin Deep: Should You Trust Your Makeup?,” New York Times, February 15, 2007.

  5  For decades, the health effects: See news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19620211&id=UpEUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MwUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6077,1540065. See also Nancy Irwin Maxwell, “Social Differences in Women’s Use of Personal Care Products: A Study of Magazine Advertisements, 1950–1994,” Silent Spring Institute, November 1, 2000.

  6  But in recent years: Zhu Hao and John Xiao, “Uptake, Translocation and Accumulation of Manufactured Iron Oxide Nanoparticles by Pumpkin Plants,” Journal of Environmental Monitoring, vol. 10 (2008), pp. 713–17.

  7  A couple of years ago: Stacey Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2007), pp. 48, 95–96. The campaign targeted companies like Los Angeles–based OPI Products, the largest maker of nail polish and nail treatment products in the world. OPI is known for offbeat products like Aphrodite’s Nightie, Melon of Troy, and All Lacquered Up, which are sold in nail salons in seventy countries. OPI had already taken the phthalate DBP out of its E.U. products, but refused to remove it, toluene, or formaldehyde—all three of which are on California’s Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity—from cosmetics sold in the United States. In 2004, the group sent a letter signed by more than fifty environmental, health, and women’s groups to 250 leading cosmetic companies, asking them to remove phthalates and sign the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, which would lead to the replacement of all toxic ingredients with safer alternatives. There was some good news: within a year, 100 companies had signed the pledge; a year after that, more than 300 companies had signed. By last year, the list had grown to 1,000. Still, most of the major companies have yet to sign, though some have agreed to remove the chemical banned by the E.U.—another indication of market pressure avoided or heeded (and niches found). The campaign took out an ad in 2002 in the Washington Post that showed a sultry, fully made-up model and the line “Something has come between me and my Calvins: toxic chemicals in beauty products.” The ad targeted product lines manufactured by Unilever (including Calvin Klein’s Eternity, Aqua Net Hair Spray, and Dove Solid Anti-Perspirant) that contained phthalates. See also safecosmetics.org.

  8  And these troubles can arise: Sandra K. Ceario and Lisa A. Hughes, “Precocious Puberty: A Comprehensive Review of Literature,” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing, vol. 36, no. 3 (2007), p. 263. For the full NIH report, see www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/docs/endocrine.pdf. See also Diana Zuckerman, “When Little Girls Become Women: Early Onset of Puberty in Girls,” Ribbon, a newsletter of the Cornell University Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State, vol. 6, no. 1 (2001); Maryann Donovan et al., “Personal Care Products That Contain Estrogens or Xenostrogens May Increase Breast Cancer Risk,” Medical Hypotheses, vol. 68 (2007), pp. 756–66; and “Ten-Year-Old Bravely Battles Breast Cancer,” CBS News, May 19, 2009.

  9  All of this: Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York: Plume Books, 1996), p. 240.

10  There they were again: “Protect Your Family from the Hidden Hazards in Air Fresheners,” Natural Resources Defense Council, September 2007.

11  Nearly 5 million metric tons: Douglas Fischer, “What’s in You,” the first of a three-part series in the Oakland Tribune, March 10, 2005.

12  The researchers expressed their frustration: Sheela Sathyanarayana, Catherine J. Karr, et al., “Baby Care Products: Possible Sources of Infant Phthalate Exposure,” Pediatrics, vol. 121, no. 2 (February 2008), pp. 260–68.

13  In state after state: The Washington study can be found at www.pollutioninpeople.org/; the Oregon study can be found at www.oeconline.org/our-work/kidshealth/pollutioninpeople.

14  In September 2000: B. C. Blount, M. J. Silva, S. P. Caudill, L. L. Needham, J. L. Pirkle, E. J. Sampson, G. W. Lucier, R. J. Jackson, and J. W. Brock, “Levels of Seven Urinary Phthalate Metabolites in a Human Reference Population,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, no. 10 (October 2000), pp. 979–82. See also M. C. Kohn, F. Parham, S. A. Masten, C. J. Portier, M. D. Shelby, J. W. Brock, and L. L. Needham, “Human Exposure Estimates for Phthalates,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, no. 10 (October 2000).

15  A study of 85 people: Males’ perineums at birth are usually about twice as long as those of females, in both humans and laboratory rodents. In this study, the baby boys of women with the highest phthalate exposures were ten times as likely to have a shortened AGD, adjusted for baby weight, as the sons of women who had the lowest phthalate exposures. The length difference was about 20 percent, according to the study, led by Shanna Swan, now at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; the results were published in Environmental Health Perspectives. Among boys with shorter AGD, 21 percent also had incomplete testicular descent and small scrotums, compared with 8 percent of the other boys. Some endocrinologists called this the first study to link an industrial chemical measured in pregnant women to altered reproductive systems in offspring. “It is really noteworthy that shortened AGD was seen,” said Niels Skakkebaek, a reproductive-disorder expert at the University of Copenhagen. “If it is proven the environment changed the [physical characteristics] of these babies in such an anti-androgenic manner, it is very serious.” See Peter Waldman, “From Ingredient in Cosmetics, Toys, a Safety Concern,” Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2005. See also Shanna Swan et al., “Decrease in Anogenital Distance Among Male Infants with Prenatal Phthalate Exposure,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 8 (August 2005).

16  Strangely enough, federal guidelines: Nena Baker, The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being (New York: North Point Press, 2008), p. 92. Because the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act does not require evidence of the safety of ingredients in cosmetics prior to their marketing, the FDA is not compelled to review or approve these products before they go on the market. Instead, the FDA allows manufacturers to (voluntarily) report customer complaints, and only then will the FDA take legal action. And product recalls? Recalls, the FDA reports, “are voluntary actions taken by manufacturers or distributors to remove from the marketplace products that represent a hazard or gross deception, or that are somehow defective.”

So once again, instead of effective government oversight, we have voluntary industry self-regulation, in this case something called the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR), an industry panel made up of seven physicians and scientists working for a group financed by the Personal Care Products Council. In its entire history, the CIR has managed to review just 11 percent of some 10,500 ingredients used in cosmetics. Another way of saying this is that 89 percent of the ingredients have never been evaluated.

For the consumer, sifting through industry-sponsored information and independent information can be difficult, even disorienting. And as with other products, this confusion can, at times, seem intentional. If you turn to the FDA, you get this: “Many nail products contain potentially harmful ingredients, but are allowed on the market because they are safe when used as directed. For example, some nail ingredients are harmful only when ingested, which is not their intended use.” See also www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-206.html; www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/research/; www.cir-safety.org/; and www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cosx-nail.html.

17  So, once again, we are left: www.cosmeticsinfo.org/aboutus.php. In 1988, U.S. representative Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) held hearings on Capitol Hill for the fiftieth anniversary of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Wyden wanted Congress to require cosmetic firms to test ingredients before they got to market and to give the FDA access to consumer complaints about products. He got nowhere. In 2007, after the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported finding lead contamination in 61 percent of the name-brand red lipsticks it tested, Senators John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein asked the FDA to take “immediate action” to reduce lead exposure in lipstick. A few weeks later, the agency announced that it had allocated resources for independent testing of some lipsticks, but said it was not valid to compare lead levels in lipstick (for which there is no safe standard) with safety recommendations for lead in candy. The FDA has no authority to “subject cosmetics to pre-market approval,” the FDA reported. Lipstick is less of a worry because it is used only topically and “is ingested in much smaller quantities than candy.” For the full FDA report, see www.fda.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-pb.html.

18  Such rhetoric does not always seem reassuring: While few studies have been done on nail salons, one report found that nail technicians had greater problems with attention and cognitive processing and that the longer people stayed in the industry, the greater the severity of problems. Another study found an increased risk of spontaneous abortions in cosmetologists in North Carolina; a third found cosmetologists at higher risk for Hodgkin’s disease. See Alexandra Gorman and Philip O’Connor, Glossed Over: Health Hazards Associated with Toxic Exposure in Nail Salons, a report for Women’s Voices for the Earth, February 2007. See also G. L. LoSasso, “Neurocognitive Sequelae of Exposure to Organic Solvents and (Meth)acrylates Among Nail Studio Technicians,” Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology, vol. 15, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 44–55; E. M. John et al., “Spontaneous Abortions Among Cosmetologists,” Epidemiology, vol. 5, no. 2 (1994), pp. 147–55; C. Robinson et al., “Cancer Mortality Among Women Employed in Fast-Growing U.S. Occupations,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, vol. 36 (1999), pp. 186–92. In California, an occupational hazard hotline found that manicurists and cosmetologists made the third-greatest number of calls about pregnancy. Many Asian-American nail workers quit their jobs when they get pregnant, to avoid health impacts; for reasons involving their culture and immigration, most are unwilling to come forward about their children’s disabilities. See the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, www.napawf.org/file/issues/issues-NailSalon.pdf.

In Boston, researchers found considerable consensus among Vietnamese nail technicians that their job was affecting their health. Most reported that chemical odors and workplace dust made them feel bad; they specified headaches, respiratory problems, and skin irritation. Many said their symptoms improved when they were away for a couple of days. Few said their employers had given them any health information; if anything, they were advised to wear masks and keep the windows open. At the Nail Stop salon in Newark, Delaware, manager Le Banh said he gives his employees leave if they become pregnant. “If we find out the lady is pregnant, we ask them to leave and then come back because the chemicals are bad for the babies,” Banh said. See www.aiha.org/aihce06/handouts/po125roelofs.pdf. See also Maddie Thomas, “Finding a Safer Manicure,” University of Delaware Review, November 25, 2008.

In 2007, after receiving complaints from Asian-American nail salon workers in and around Houston, the EPA published a guide called Protecting the Health of Nail Salon Workers that would seem to be of interest to anyone using nail products. Many of the products used in nail salons—and presumably in private homes—“should be used and handled properly to minimize potential for overexposure.” What might some of the problems of overexposure be? Here are a few, according to the EPA: DBP, a phthalate used in nail polish and nail hardener, “may be hazardous to human reproduction and development.” Acetone, a nail polish remover and fingernail glue remover, may cause central nervous system depression. Formalin (a compound containing 37 to 50 percent formaldehyde and 6 to 15 percent alcohol stabilizer, used as a nail hardener) “may be a carcinogen if inhaled in high concentrations or for long periods.” Toluene, also used to remove nail polish and fingernail glue, “may cause irritation to eyes and nose, weakness, exhaustion, confusion, inappropriate feelings of happiness, dizziness, headache, dilated pupils, runny eyes, anxiety, muscle fatigue, inability to sleep, feeling of numbness/tingling, skin rash, and in more serious cases of overexposure or intentional abuse, liver and kidney damage.” Titanium dioxide, used in nail polish and in powder for artificial nails, “may be an occupational carcinogen.” The EPA also notes that “some nail products contain liquid methyl methacrylate (MMA),” which is “a poisonous and harmful substance” that has been banned or restricted in “at least 30 states.” This, I suppose, is useful to know. But it does raise a question: Why is it still available in the other 20 states? See Enivronmental Protection Agency, Protecting the Health of Nail Salon Workers, March 2007 (www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/projects/salon/index.htm).

19  You’ll find similar tags: See www.cpsc.gov/businfo/frnotices/fr96/frsleeplg.html.

20  Did the flame retardants save our lives?: See National Academies Press, www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9841&page=1, p. 15.

21  People have been inventing: Overall, global demand for flame retardants jumped from 20,000 tons in 1984 to about 70,000 tons in 2004. About 95 percent of all deca PBDEs produced worldwide are used in the United States and Canada. In 2001, American companies alone used 66 millions pounds of them. See Anita Lahey, “Unsafe Assumption,” Canadian Geographic, May–June 2003. See also Yana Kucker and Meghan Purvis, “Body of Evidence: New Science in the Debate Over Toxic Flame Retardants and Our Health,” National Association of State PIRGs and the Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2004.

The chemical industry maintains that deca is a larger chemical compound than either penta or octa, and is thus less easily absorbed into the body than its chemical cousins. But a number of studies dispute this, and have shown that once deca is “exposed”—to sunlight or the digestive systems of fish, for example—it can break down into its more dangerous cousins.

22  These additives are not incidental: T. Madsen, S. Lee, and T. Olle, “Growing Threats: Toxic Flame Retardants and Children’s Health,” Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2003. See also R. C. Hale, M. J. La Guardia, E. Harvey, and T. M. Mainor, “Potential Role of Fire Retardant–Treated Polyurethane Foam as a Source of Brominated Diphenyl Ethers to the US Environment,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 729–35.

23  Here’s the problem: T. McDonald, “A Perspective on the Potential Health Risks of PBDEs,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 745–55; T. O. Darnerud et al., “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers: Occurrence, Dietary Exposure, and Toxicology,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 109, supp. 1 (March 2001), pp. 49–68. See also P. O. Darnerud, “Toxic Effects of Brominated Flame Retardants in Man and Wildlife,” Environment International, vol. 29, no. 6 (2003), pp. 841–53; I. Branchi, F. Capone, E. Alleva, and L. G. Costa, “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers: Neurobehavioral Effects Following Developmental Exposure,” Neurotoxicology, vol. 24, no. 3 (2003), pp. 449–62; and T. A. McDonald, “A Perspective on the Potential Health Risks of PBDEs,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 745–55; H. Stapleton, M. Alaee, and J. Baker, “Debromination of Decabromodiphenyl Ether by Juvenile Carp (Cyprinus carpio),” Organohalogen Compounds, vol. 61 (2003), pp. 21–24; M. LaGuardia, R. C. Hale, and E. Harvey, “Are Waste Water Treatment Plants Sources for Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers?,” a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), 2003; and Watamabe et al., “Formation of Brominated Dibenzofurans from the Photolysis of Flame Retardant Decabromidiphenyl Etherin Hexane Solution by UV and Sunlight,” Bulletin of Environmental Containment Toxicology, vol. 35 (1987), pp. 953–59.

24  Flame retardants are one: National Geographic Society, The Green Guide: The Compete Reference for Consuming Wisely (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008).

25  Toxic flame retardants were first identified: Anita Lahey, “Unsafe Assumption,” Canadian Geographic, May–June 2003. See also Yana Kucker and Meghan Purvis, “Body of Evidence: New Science in the Debate Over Toxic Flame Retardants and Our Health,” National Association of State PIRGs and the Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2004.

26  The quantity of flame retardants: Rebecca Renner, “What Fate for Brominated Flame Retardants?,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 34, no. 9 (May 2000), pp. 223A–26A; A. Bocio, J. M. Llobet, J. L. Domingo, J. Corbella, A. Teixido, and C. Casas, “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) in Foodstuffs: Human Exposure Through the Diet,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 51, no. 10 (2003), pp. 3191–95; R. C. Hale, M. Alaee, J. B. Manchester-Neesvig, H. M. Stapleton, and M. G. Ikonomou, “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether Flame Retardants in the North American Environment,” Environment International, vol. 29, no. 6 (2003), pp. 771–79; D. Meironyte et al., “Analysis of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Swedish Human Milk: A Time-Related Trend Study, 1972–1997,” Journal of Toxicological Environmental Health, Part A, vol. 58, no. 6 (1999), pp. 329–41; K. Hooper and J. She, “Lessons from the Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs): Precautionary Principle, Primary Prevention, and the Value of Community-Based Body-Burden Monitoring Using Breast Milk,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 111, no. 1 (2003), pp.109–13.

27  Flame retardants are “fat-soluble”: “The exponential increase of flame retardants in breast milk is alarming and calls for measures to stop the exposure,” the Swedish report said. “Since also these environmental pollutants are or may become globally spread the consequences are of international concern. The present study shows that monitoring of breast milk serves an important sentinel function in detecting the occurrence and exposure of widespread toxic contaminants at an early stage and provides possibility to take measures before adverse health effects appear.” See K. Noren and D. Meironyte, “Certain Organochlorine and Organobromine Contaminants in Swedish Human Milk in Perspective of Past 20–30 Years,” Chemosphere, vol. 40 (2000), pp. 1111–23.

28  As public concern grew: Sweden is the only nation with a comprehensive breast milk monitoring program, so it has been difficult to track these trends elsewhere. However, in regions where bans and restrictions have not been established, available studies are showing that concentrations of flame retardants in breast milk have risen far past Sweden’s 1997 peak. See P. O. Darnerud, M. Aune, S. Atuma, W. Becker, R. Bjerselius, S. Cnattingius, and A. Glynn, “Time Trend of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether (PBDE) Levels in Breast Milk from Uppsala, Sweden, 1996–2001,” Organohalogen Compounds, vol. 58 (2002), pp. 233–36. At Sweden’s urging, the European Commission banned the sale and use of penta and octa in 2004, and began phasing out the use of deca in electronics a couple of years later. The International POPs Elimination Network, an alliance of nongovernmental organizations from sixty-five countries, is working to get all three added to the “dirty dozen” chemicals listed by the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty designed to protect people and the environment from toxic chemicals. For more information about the International POPs Elimination Network, see www.ipen.org/ or the European Union’s Directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, “on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment,” Document PE-CONS 3662/02, Brussels, November 8, 2002, available at europa.eu.int/.

In this country, no federal regulatory action has been taken to ban or restrict flame retardants. The EPA reached a voluntary agreement with Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, the compounds’ only manufacturer, to cease production of penta and octa in 2004, but products containing the stuff still abound—both in older products and in new ones imported from places like China. As with other toxins, laws restricting their manufacture in the United States do very little if most of the products are coming in from other places. Some of the chemicals replacing PBDEs are themselves suspect. Foam once made with penta is now made with chlorinated tris, a chemical banned from children’s pajamas in the 1970s because it was shown to cause cancer.

In the summer of 2008, reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined the EPA’s oversight of tris, which has also been linked to reproductive and developmental problems. The paper found that the EPA’s program set up to warn the public about toxic chemicals relies on studies that were at best decades old, and at worst had been paid for by the very industries they were supposed to oversee. “This lopsided assessment is the latest example of how the EPA gives preferential treatment to the chemical industry,” the newspaper reported. “Instead of conducting independent reviews of chemicals, the EPA allows chemical manufacturers to characterize the safety of the products they make. The EPA then posts those claims on its Web site, often without verifying or correcting the information.”

Arlene Blum, a scientist from the University of California–Berkeley whose work led to the chemicals being taken out of children’s sleepwear in the 1970s, told the paper she was astonished to learn that chlorinated tris is back in such widespread use in other consumer products, particularly couches and places where children play. “We are going from one toxin to another with no requirement to tell people about the threats to their health and safety,” Blum said. “It’s been more than 30 years and the chemical industry hasn’t bothered to come up with an alternative? We can’t do any better than this?” See Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, “Hazardous Flame Retardant Found in Household Objects,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 13, 2008.

29  So how flame retardant: Arnold Schecter et al., “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) in U.S. Mothers’ Milk,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 111, no. 14 (November 2004).

30  And if you think those women: Kellyn S. Betts, “A New Record for PBDE’s in People,” Environmental Science and Technology, May 25, 2005; pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/may/science/kb_newrecord.html. The full study can be found at pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/esthag/2005/39/i14/html/es050399x.html.

31  As you can see: Half the salmon sold worldwide, most of it Atlantic salmon, is raised on farms in northern Europe, Chile, Canada, and the United States. The team tested seven hundred fish taken from the top-producing salmon farms in the world: in Norway, Chile, Scotland, British Columbia, eastern Canada, the Faroe Islands, and Washington State. The highest levels were found in fish farmed in Europe; the lowest levels were in farmed salmon from Chile. Most of the salmon sold in European stores come from European farms, which produce the most contaminated fish; most of the salmon in the United States comes from Chile and Canada. Among the wild fish, PBDE concentrations were highest in wild chinook from British Columbia, perhaps because, as fish eaters themselves, they feed higher on the food chain than other salmon, which tend to eat smaller invertebrates and zooplankton. “It has been suggested that PBDE concentrations now observed in humans may leave little or no margin of safety,” the study’s authors write. “Thus, prudent public health practice argues for the selective consumption of food, including many wild salmon species that contain comparatively lower concentrations of PBDEs.” See Ronald Hites et al., “Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon,” Science, vol. 303 (January 9, 2004), pp. 226–92; see also Ronald Hites, Jeffrey Forman, et al., “Global Assessment of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Farmed and Wild Salmon,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 38 (2004), pp. 4945–49. The salmon farmers’ association has a lot to lose if consumers begin to believe that farmed salmon is not safe food. British Columbia, Canada’s largest aquaculture-producing province, generated sales of C$329.6 million in 2002, up 12.3 percent from 2001; “Chemical Flame Retardants Found in Farmed Salmon,” Environmental News Service, August 10, 2004. Managed Care Weekly, which provides “essential management information to healthcare executives,” circulated an article titled “Salmon Study Shows Levels of PBDEs Pose Little Risk.” See Managed Care Weekly, September 6, 2004.

32  All of this news: Arnold Schecter et al., “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers Contamination of United States Food,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 38 (2004), pp. 5306–11. See also “PBDEs and the Environmental Intervention Time Lag,” Environmental Science and Technology Science News, October 15, 2004. For studies in flame retardants and fish consumption in Japan and Europe, see S. Ohta et al., “Comparison of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Fish, Vegetables, and Meats and Levels in Human Milk of Nursing Women in Japan,” Chemosphere, vol. 46, no. 5 (2002), pp. 689–96; Bocio et al., “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) in Foodstuffs: Human Exposure Through the Diet,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 51, no. 10 (2003), pp. 3191–95; M. Zennegg, M. Kohler, A. C. Gerecke, and P. Schmid, “Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Whitefish from Swiss Lakes and Farmed Rainbow Trout,” Chemosphere, vol. 51, no. 7 (2003), pp. 545–53.

33  Just two years before: James E. McWilliams, “Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem,” New York Times, November 17, 2008.

34  In May, almost a million tubes: Walt Bogdanich, “From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine,” New York Times, May 6, 2007. See also Associated Press, “2 Companies Charged over Tainted Toothpaste,” New York Times, March 6, 2008, and Louise Story and Geraldine Fabrikant, “4 Executives Are Charged over Tainted Toothpaste,” New York Times, March 7, 2008.

35  A burden indeed: Jad Mouawad, “550,000 More Chinese Toys Recalled for Lead,” New York Times, September 27, 2007.

36  The hazards of lead: Ellen Silbergeld, Michael Waalkes, and Jerry M. Rice, “Lead as a Carcinogen: Experimental Evidence and Mechanisms of Action,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, vol. 38 (2000), pp. 316–23.

37  Despite scientific warnings: Melissa Hendricks, “Lead’s Nemesis,” Johns Hopkins Magazine, April 2000. See also Liz Szabo, “Where Does Lead Go? Into Bones,” USA Today, October 28, 2007. And it’s not just kids or the elderly who are at risk when they put lead-tainted things in their mouth. In Germany, lead poisoning even became a concern for pot smokers. Apparently, dealers were adding lead pellets—some of them big enough to see—to increase the weight of bags of their wares. This turned out nicely for the dealers, whose bags weighed 10 percent more and cleared an extra $682 per pound. But when smokers lighted up, the heat of their joints, which can reach 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, was plenty hot enough to melt the lead and cause respiratory problems. When 145 smokers showed up for a screening at a German clinic, 95 of them had lead poisoning. To the smokers who complained that they thought they were buying an all-natural product, their doctor in Leipzig had one thing to say: “How naïve!” See Denise Grady, “Germany: Marijuana Smokers Were Poisoned with Lead in Leipzig,” New York Times, April 15, 2008.

38  Dr. Silbergeld, whose work figured: Ellen Silbergeld, “The Unbearable Heaviness of Lead,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 77, no. 1 (2003), pp. 164–71. See also Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “Cater to the Children: The Role of the Lead Industry in a Public Health Tragedy,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 90 (2000), pp. 36–46; Mark Lustberg and Ellen Silbergeld, “Blood Levels and Mortality,” Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 162 (November 25, 2002); and Frank Roylance, “Lead Tied to Criminal Behavior,” Baltimore Sun, May 28, 2008.

39  More recently, Dr. Silbergeld: Liz Szabo, “Where Does Lead Go? Into Bones,” USA Today, October 28, 2007; Melissa Hendricks, “Lead’s Nemesis,” Johns Hopkins Magazine, April 2000.

40  Here, at least in part: See the company website at www.rc2corp.com/company/multicheck.asp.

41  In the Frequently Asked Questions: See recalls.rc2.com/recalls_faqs.html.

42  A few hours later: See the ASTM website: www.astm.org/ABOUT/aboutASTM.html.

43  What federal oversight there is: In 1983, the Consumer Product Safety Commission determined that substantial exposure to DEHP, a common phthalate, could put children at risk for cancer, but the CPSC didn’t issue a regulation. Instead, it reached an agreement with the Toy Industry Association to keep DEHP out of pacifiers, rattles, and teethers. The agreement left unregulated all other toys that babies put in their mouths. When President Bush came to office in 2000, he named as head of the consumer protection agency Harold D. Stratton, a former attorney general of New Mexico. Stratton was a conservative Republican and a Bush campaign volunteer who had made a name for himself by criticizing other law enforcement agencies that tried “to impose their own antibusiness, pro-government regulation views.” Later, he became cofounder of a nonprofit group, the Rio Grande Foundation, which claimed to promote “individual freedom, limited government, and economic opportunity.” Consumer advocates also criticized Bush for leaving a seat open on the commission’s three-seat board, in effect preventing the agency from issuing new rules or penalizing companies that violate existing rules. See Jane Kay, “Toxic: San Francisco Prepares to Ban Certain Chemicals in Products for Tots, but Enforcement Will Be Tough—and Toymakers Question Necessity,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 2006. See also Stephen Labaton, “Senate Votes to Strengthen Product Safety Laws,” New York Times, March 7, 2008.

44  Not only that: David Barboza, “As More Toys Are Recalled, Trail Ends in China,” New York Times, June 18, 2007.

45  Here’s what else it looks like: Eric Lipton, “Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Charges,” New York Times, September 2, 2007. Joel Ticknor, a professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell, considers federal protection against toxins in toys to be “weak at best and dysfunctional at worst. Consumers would be astonished if they knew that federal laws regulating chemicals in children’s toys all require balancing the benefits of protecting children with the costs to industry of implementing safer alternatives.” See Jane Kay, “Toxic: San Francisco Prepares to Ban Certain Chemicals in Products for Tots, but Enforcement Will Be Tough—and Toymakers Question Necessity,” San Francisco Chronicle. November 19, 2006; see also Jane Kay, “Supervisors Tweak ‘Toxic’ Child Products; City Will Test up to 100 Items a Year, List Those Illegal to Sell,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 11, 2007.

46  In the absence of adequate disclosure: In the last couple of years alone, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News has closed up shop, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped publishing a paper, in favor of a Web-only publication, and such major papers as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Boston Globe have been laying off reporters in droves. But the demise of the press is a story for another time. Thankfully, for now at least, there are still a few reporters looking into contaminated consumer products.

47  Around this time: Contacted by the Tribune, the Toysmith Group, an Auburn, Washington–based company that imports the Godzillas from China, said its own tests had found lead levels well under the safety limit. “I don’t know what more we could have done to be certain that we are only selling safe products,” a lawyer for the company said. Asked about the findings, the spokeswoman for the safety commission, Julie Vallese, said it “always welcomes credible information to be reported to the agency so that we could follow up to determine if in fact toys, based on our own scientific testing, are in violation of the law.” See Ted Gregory and Sam Roe, “Hidden Hazards: Kids at Risk; Many More Toys Tainted with Lead, Inquiry Finds,” Chicago Tribune, November 18, 2007.

48  The Tribune found: The paper’s findings differed from the company’s. Baby Einstein is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, and the toy’s distributor Kids II Inc., pays Disney to use the Baby Einstein name. “We realize that the current attention to toy safety may require new discussions and perhaps new industry approaches to testing, quality control and manufacturing,” Jeff Cornelison, Kids II’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, told the paper. “Kids II will always remain part of those discussions to ensure that our industry continues to provide safe, quality products for children and their families.”

Kids II recalled about 35,000 of the blocks sold in the summer of 2007 because of high lead levels. But the company recalled the set because of its painted blue blocks—not the yellow ones tested by the newspaper. The blocks the Tribune bought were not covered by the recall. When the paper notified Walgreens of its findings, the store pulled the item nationwide. Company spokeswoman Carol Hively said Walgreens believes the item is not technically a toy and therefore not subject to lead safety rules. But, she said, “a child might think they kind of look like a toy or for the holidays they might be displayed in the reach of a child, so … we pulled them. We just wanted to do the right thing.” See Ted Gregory and Sam Roe, “Hidden Hazards: Special Report: Kids at Risk,” Chicago Tribune, November 18, 2007.

49  All this news: “Consumer Groups Applaud President for Signing Strong Products Safety Bill into Law,” press release from the Consumer Federation of American, August 14, 2008; www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/POTUS_Signing_Law_press_release_8_14_08.pdf. Critics of the bill were many, and fierce. Republican senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina complained that the bill would provide a “playground for plaintiffs’ attorneys.” DeMint also said that allowing whistle-blower status “makes it legally impossible to fire disruptive employees” and that the database would be used “to anonymously smear companies” by circulating “frivolous complaints filed by left-wing interest groups.” Giving power to states “undermines a cooperative relationship between businesses and the Consumer Product Safety Commission,” he added. See Stephen Labaton, “Senate Votes to Strengthen Product Safety Laws,” New York Times, March 7, 2008.

Jim Neill, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, claimed that the database would allow “rumor and innuendo” to smear safe products. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was upset that that law would leave room for states to pass safety standards stricter than the federal guidelines—as Maine, for example, did with flame retardants. “Manufacturers are going to have a difficult time because they’re going to have a patchwork of laws to deal with,” said Thomas Myers, an attorney for the chamber. “Theoretically, they can have 50 different laws their products have to comply with.” See Jim Tankersley and Patricia Callahan, “Bill Targets Toy Safety,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 2008.

50  During the back-and-forth: Patricia Callahan and Amanda Erickson, “The Mattel Loophole: Congress May Back Off Pledge of Independent Toy Testing,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2008. The Bush White House, always sympathetic to industry concerns, did not want to extend whistle-blower status to employees who disclosed company information. The administration also opposed the database of consumer complaints and, taking the Mattel line, requiring testing laboratories to be independent and privately owned. “These provisions threaten to burden American consumers and industry in unproductive ways, and may actually harm a well-functioning product safety system,” an administration statement said. See also Ruth Mantell and Matt Andrejczak, “Manufacturers Resist Safety-Reform Provisions,” MarketWatch, March 3, 2008.

51  The Mattel Loophole: The battle over the law did not end with President Bush’s signature. Initially, the ban did not cover products already in company warehouses or already on store shelves, because manufacturers complained that they would have to dump hundreds of millions of products to comply. This fact did not sit well with consumer advocates. “How will parents know whether the rubber ducky they’re buying was made today and not in March?” said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety for the Consumer Federation of America. Finally, in February 2009, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the CPSC may not let these phthalate-containing toys remain on shelves. The safety commission will not appeal the ruling, which “provides unequivocally and unambiguously that no covered products may be sold as of Feb. 10, 2009,” said the ruling. And from the Department of Unintended Consequences: the American Library Association is now worried what the new law might mean for school and public libraries. Since the new law could feasibly apply to ordinary, paper-based children’s books—many of which are made with both phthalates and lead paint—all children’s books on public and school library shelves could, theoretically, be required to be removed for testing. If not, kids twelve and under would be banned from visiting. See www.cpsc.gov/ABOUT/Cpsia/faq/108faq.html. See also Annys Shin, “Some Toys with Banned Plastics Will Stay on Market,” Washington Post, November 19, 2008; “Toys with Banned Toxin Must Go, Judge Decides,” Associated Press, February 5, 2009; and Debra Lau Whelan, “Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act Delayed for One Year,” School Library Journal, February 2, 2009.

52  What were we to think about the fact: Frederick S. vom Saal and Claude Hughes, “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 8 (August 2005). See also Laura N. Vandenberg et al., “Human Exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA),” Reproductive Toxicology, vol. 24 (2007), pp. 139–77.

53  Where else can you find BPA?: Hoa H. Le, Emily M. Carlson, Jason P. Chua, and Scott M. Belcher, “Bisphenol A Is Released from Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles and Mimics the Neurotoxic Actions of Estrogen in Developing Cerebellar Neurons,” Toxicology Letters, vol. 176, no. 2 (January 30, 2008), pp. 149–56.

54  BPA is used to harden: Jose Antonio Brotons, Maria Fatima Olea-Serrano, Mercedes Villalobos, Vicente Pedraza, and Nicolas Oleanique, “Xenoestrogens Released from Lacquer Coatings in Food Cans,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 103 (1995), pp. 608–12. The study is available at www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=7556016. See also Yuji Takao et al., “Release of Bisphenol A from Food Can Lining upon Heating,” Journal of Health Sciences, vol. 48, no. 4 (2002), pp. 331–34.

55  “There is a large body”: “Hot Liquids Release Potentially Harmful Chemicals in Polycarbonate Plastic Bottles,” University of Cincinnati HealthNews, January 30, 2008.

56  Like countless researchers: Hoa H. Le, Emily M. Carlson, Jason P. Chua, and Scott M. Belcher, “Bisphenol A Is Released from Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles and Mimics the Neurotoxic Actions of Estrogen in Developing Cerebellar Neurons,” Toxicology Letters, vol. 176, no. 2 (January 30, 2008), pp. 149–56. Pharmaceutical researchers initially experimented with BPA in the 1930s because of its hormone-like effects. The compound was passed over in favor of DES (diethylstilbestrol), a more potent estrogenic drug eventually given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages from the 1940s to the 1970s—resulting in 5 to 10 million exposures. Women exposed to DES are now known to be at increased risk for breast cancer, and their daughters are at increased risk for vaginal and cervical cancer, as well as pregnancy complications and infertility. See Nena Baker, The Body Toxic, p. 150.

57  “As a mother”: Feliza Mirasol, “The BPA Defense,” ICIS Chemical Business, June 2, 2008. The rhetorical battle over the safety of BPA has been intense. In 2004, the American Plastics Council funded a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis that concluded that the evidence for low-dose effects of BPA were weak. The study was delayed for two and half years—during which time a number of studies showed that the opposite was true. In 2005, Frederick vom Saal, from the University of Missouri, and Claude Hughes, from East Carolina University, surveyed 115 studies done on BPA. “Our current conclusion that widespread exposure to BPA poses a threat to human health directly contradicts several recent reports from individuals or groups associated with or funded by chemical corporations,” they noted. They found that 94 of the studies showed “significant” effects; 31 showed the effects at exposure levels below doses considered “safe.”

“Nonetheless, chemical manufacturers continue to discount these published findings because no industry-funded studies have reported significant effects of low doses of BPA,” Vom Saal and Hughes said, even though more than 90 percent of government-funded studies have reported significant effects. See Frederick S. vom Saal and Claude Hughes, “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 8 (August 2005).

58  In a follow-up report: Cary Spivak, Meg Kissinger, and Susanne Rust, “Bisphenol A Is in You,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 2, 2007, and Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust, “Tests Find Chemical After Normal Heating of ‘Microwave Safe’ Plastics,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 15, 2008. See also Marla Cone, “Public Health Agency Linked to Chemical Industry,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2007. That summer, a panel of the world’s leading BPA experts, convening in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, concluded that the compound was “a great cause for concern,” especially given its potential links to prostate and breast cancer, low sperm counts, and genital abnormalities in male babies. Nonetheless, in November, a panel working for the Bush administration’s National Toxicology Program ignored much of the Chapel Hill warnings; its own tepid report declared BPA only of “some concern.” If “some concern” sounds like a particularly ambivalent expression, it seems to have been designed that way. The NTP uses a scale ranging from “negligible concern” to “serious concern” with “some concern” lying somewhere in the middle—a hint of a warning, it seems, but not enough to anger industry. Scientists, public health officials, and environmental advocates were angered by the opaque language. See Frederick vom Saal et al., “Chapel Hill Bisphenol A Expert Panel Consensus Statement: Integration of Mechanisms, Effects in Animals and Potential to Impact Human Health at Current Levels of Exposure,” Reproductive Toxicology, vol. 24, no. 2 (August–September 2007), pp. 131–38.

59  In May 2008: Martin Mittelstaedt, “The Hidden Chemical in Cans,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 29, 2008; Martin Mittelstaedt, “BPA in Cans Safe: Health Canada,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 30, 2008. In the spring of 2008, after reports arose showing traces of BPA in the plastic linings of cans of infant formula, Congress asked the FDA how it had decided that there was “no safety concern at the current exposure level.” The FDA confessed that it had based its ruling on a pair of industry studies, one of which had never even been published. John Dingell, the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, wrote a scathing letter to the commissioner of the FDA. “Given that there are dozens of published, peer-reviewed studies related to BPA, your development of critical public health policy in this manner, especially as related to infants and children, seems highly questionable.” To read Representative Dingell’s letter to Andrew Eschenbach, the commissioner of the FDA, see energycommerce.house.gov/Press_110/110-ltr.040408.FDA.ltrvonEschenbach.BPA.pdf. In January 2010, the FDA declared it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans. See Denise Grady, “F.D.A. Concerned About Substance in Food Packaging,” New York Times, January 15, 2010. For a timeline of the BPA controversy, see the Environmental Working Group’s chronology at www.ewg.org/reports/bpatimeline.

60  “In Canada, at least”: “The general public has a horrible time trying to figure out what is polycarbonate, what is ethylene-based, propylene-based plastics,” said Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri and one of the country’s leading bisphenol A researchers. “They have a terrible time figuring out the chemicals in plastics, because there is no requirement from the FDA to label that. But if it’s hard and clear, and it’s a baby bottle, or it’s a sport water bottle, it’s likely polycarbonate, and I use none of those products. This is terrible to impose that kind of burden on the consumer. This is an indirect food additive. Why not have product labeling so that people don’t have to suffer like this in terms of stress of, is this product safe or not safe?” See “BPA Exposure and Human Health Concerns,” a broadcast of The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU, April 29, 2008.

61  “I eat nothing out of cans”: “BPA Exposure and Human Health Concerns,” The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU, April 29, 2008.

62  Even before the jug of blench reaches your home: David Nitkin, “Deadly Cargo to Roll On,” Baltimore Sun, May 25, 2008.

63  And so it goes: Recent research into the marketing of everything from cigarettes to plastics reveals that companies don’t just manufacture products, they manufacture doubt. “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public,” claimed a tobacco industry memo in 1969. “It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” See David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 11.

64  Our compulsive reliance: Michael Janofsky, “DuPont to Pay $16.5 Million for Unreported Risks,” New York Times, December 15, 2004; Jack Kaskey, “EPA Says DuPont Withheld Data on Teflon Chemical Risk,” Bloomberg News, July 11, 2004.

65  People have been much: householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/index.htm; toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/r?dbs+hsdb:@term+@rn+111-76-2.

66  When he begins designing: Take laundry detergent. All detergents are made with “surfactants,” compounds that disperse oils and stains. Some synthetic surfactants, like nonylphenol ethoxylates, or NPEs, have become of particular interest to Wolf, especially given recent studies showing their connection to hormone disruption in fish. NPEs are used in pulp and paper processing and by a number of industries, and play a part in the manufacturing of everything from textiles to paints and pesticides. They can also be used as an emulsifier for wax sprayed on fruits and vegetables, as a polymer resin in plastics, and in personal care products like deodorant, skin cream, and shampoo. But the largest volume of NPEs goes into laundry detergents. In 2004 alone, of the more than 260 million pounds of the compound used in the United States, over 80 percent of it went into cleaning products like laundry detergents.

A survey of the scientific literature on NPEs done by the Sierra Club in 2005 noted that metabolites of NPEs can be found in nearly two-thirds of American streams and that exposure to the compound “causes organisms to develop both male and female sex organs; increases mortality and damage to the liver and kidney; decreases testicular growth and sperm counts in male fish; and disrupts normal male-to-female sex ratios, metabolism, development, growth and reproduction.”

In this country, predictably, there is an industry group, this one funded by the soap companies, that is determined to keep the government from restricting its choice of ingredients. The industry has for years been against the general banning of phosphates, the synthetic surfactants once found in virtually all laundry, dishwasher, and liquid soaps. Drained in huge quantities from homes and businesses, phosphates create havoc in rivers and lakes by fertilizing aquatic plants that then suck all the oxygen from the water, creating massive dead zones.

Phosphates were banned in laundry detergents in the 1990s, but Wolf still spends a good bit of his time trying to get state legislators to ban the compounds outright—this in opposition to the political stance of the soap and detergent industry as a whole. Washington State, home to ecologically endangered Puget Sound, banned phosphates in 2010. See the Sierra Club report at www.sierraclub.org/toxics/nonylphenol_ethoxylates3.pdf.

67  Europe and Latin America: Leslie Kaufman, “Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests,” New York Times, February 25, 2009.

68  As companies like Seventh Generation: The blurring of the marketplace between conventional cleaners and their “alternatives” has left more than a few consumers scratching their heads. Clorox, whose Green Works line is the company’s first new brand in twenty years, trumpets an endorsement from an unlikely ally: the Sierra Club. In return for the favor—the first product endorsement in its 116-year history—the environmental group receives an (undisclosed) fee. Such an alliance can be viewed a couple of ways: as a cynical coup for an industry leader trying to gain a foothold in a growing market or as a successful push by an environmental organization to get manufacturers to introduce less toxic products. “We hope we are transforming the marketplace by doing this,” said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. “These products are clean, they’re green, they’re not going to hurt you, and they’re not going to hurt the environment.” See Ilana DeBare, “Clorox Introduces Green Line of Cleaning Products,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 2008.

69  Martin Wolf is unmoved: “We’re committed to having a science-based approach to sustainability,” said Lauren Thaman, a P&G public affairs specialist. “We have taken a life-cycle analysis approach to ensure we are making claims that are meaningful and measureable. I will tell you that until being able to say something is ‘natural’ means it is more sustainable, we will not do that.” See Michael McCoy, “The Greening Game,” Chemical & Engineering News, January 26, 2009.

70  To Martin Wolf: Marcelle S. Fischler, “A Safe House?,” New York Times, February 15, 2007, and Howard Fine, “Dry Cleaning Blues,” Los Angeles Business Journal, February 4, 2008.

71  In the last couple of years: Jeffrey Hollender, “Has Seventh Generation Sold Out by Working with Wal-Mart?” GreenBiz.com, October 29, 2008; www.greenbiz.com/blog/2008/10/29/strange-bedfellows-seventh-generation-wal-mart?p.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE TAP

  1  Although thousands of synthetic toxins: Charles Duhigg, “That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy,” New York Times, December 16, 2009.

  2  “Surprisingly little is known”: Dana W. Kolpin et al., “Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams, 1999–2000: A National Reconnaissance,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 36, no. 6 (2002), pp. 1202–11.

  3  Some 97 percent: U.S. Geological Survey, “Pesticides in the Nation’s Streams and Ground Water, 1992–2001: A Summary,” Fact Sheet 2006–3028, March 2006. The report can be found at water.usgs.gov/nawqa. See also Charles Duhigg, “Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass,” New York Times, August 22, 2009; Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future (New York: Plume Books, 1996); and www.pollutioninpeople.org/results/report/chapter-6/ddt_pcb_1.

  4  Kauffman spends a good bit: Dawn Fallik, “Drinking Water Holds Surprises,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 28, 2004.

  5  “Water treatment systems”: After surveying mountains of data from state water departments in 2005, the Environmental Working Group reported that 260 contaminants were routinely found in the nation’s tap water, including 141 that don’t even have enforceable safety limits. Dozens of these unregulated chemicals have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, and immune system damage. More distressing, the EWG found that states spend just a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars they receive through the federal Clean Water Act on mitigating pollution running off farms and city and suburban streets, which makes up 60 percent of water pollution. By not controlling pollution at its source—by not convincing farms and shopping malls to control runoff—states instead depend on massive treatment plants to clean water up at the back end. This, by anyone’s estimation, is a poor trade-off. “We find a deep disconnect between what people care about and what the government is willing to act upon,” the EWG report concluded. “From agricultural pollution, to industrial waste, to pollution stemming from sprawl and urban runoff, a lack of political will materializes into poor planning and scarce funding that leads to pollution beginning upstream and ending at the tap.” See Environmental Working Group, “A National Assessment of Tap Water Quality,” December 20, 2005; www.ewg.org/tapwater/findings.php.

  6  Before the federal Clean Water Act: Charles Duhigg, “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering,” New York Times, September 12, 2009.

  7  To be fair: See the EPA website at www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/tmdl/pa_tmdl/ChristinaMeetingTMDL/NutrientLDO/Sec2-CR_Nutrient_TMDL-20060118.pdf.

  8  A few years ago: Jennifer Roberts, Ellen Silbergeld, and Thaddeus Graczyk, “A Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Cryptosporidium Exposure Among Baltimore Urban Anglers,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, vol. 70 (2007), pp. 1568–76.

  9  Now, you might say: CNN, September 2, 1996.

10  In the spring of 2008: Ellen Silbergeld and Jay Graham, “The Cuyahoga Is Still Burning,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 116, no. 4 (April 2008). Waterborne pathogens are not included in the fish advisories mandated by the Clean Water Act of 1977. And despite the growing prevalence of things like E. coli and cryptosporidium, the way pathogens are measured has not been updated since the 1960s.

11  The problem is not just animal waste: See the EPA website at cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=4. See also Elizabeth Royte, “A Tall, Cool Drink of … Sewage?,” New York Times Magazine, August 10, 2008.

12  In Baltimore, sewage treatment systems: www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2005/July/05_enrd_387.htm.

13  “It’s hard to quantify”: Charles Duhigg, “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering,” New York Times, September 12, 2009.

14  And what is true in miniature: Timothy Wheeler, “Chicken Farmers Face Strict EPA Rules,” Baltimore Sun, March 15, 2009.

15  But given American history: Felicity Barringer, “Reach of Clean Water Act Is at Issue in 2 Supreme Court Cases,” New York Times, February 20, 2006. See also “A Clear, Clean Water Act,” New York Times, April 16, 2009, and Gerald Kauffman, “What If … the United States of America Were Based on Watersheds?,” Water Policy, vol. 4 (2002), pp. 57–68.

16  Just a couple of weeks before: Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza, and Justin Pritchard, “An AP Investigation: Pharmaceuticals Found in Drinking Water,” Associated Press, March 10, 2008.

17  Another enormous headache: PBS’s Frontline, “Poisoned Waters,” April 21, 2009. See also Timothy Wheeler, “Chicken Growers Face EPA Crackdown,” Baltimore Sun, March 15, 2009.

18  Fluoride has been added: See the congressional testimony of Dr. William Hirzy, National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 280, June 29, 2000, at www.fluoridealert.org/testimony.htm.

19  In 2001, the CDC: Sharon Begley, “Government Panel Raises Concern About Fluoride,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2006. See also Margot Roosevelt, “Not in My Water Supply,” Time, October 17, 2005.

20  The story doesn’t end here: Thomas Webler et al., “Exposure to Tetrachloroethylene via Contaminated Drinking Water Pipes in Massachusetts: A Predictive Model,” Archives of Environmental Health, vol. 48 (1993), pp. 293–97. See also Ann Aschengrau et al., “Cancer Risk and Tetrachloroethylene-Contaminated Drinking Water in Massachusetts,” Archives of Environmental Health, vol. 48 (1993), pp. 284–92, and Charles D. Larson et al., “Tetrachloroethylene Leached from Lined Asbestos-Cement Pipe into Drinking Water,” Research and Technology, April 1983.

21  In the Maine body burden study: Ellen Silbergeld, testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Hearing on Lead in D.C. Water and Sewer Authority Water, in Public Confidence Down the Drain: The Federal Role in Ensuring Safe Drinking Water in the District of Columbia (GPO, March 5, 2004). Even as contamination from one anti-knock fuel additive diminishes, others arise, Jerry Kauffman says. “We’ve seen some fantastic dips in environmental lead,” Kauffman said. “The trouble is, now we’re seeing all this MBTE ending up in the groundwater.”

22  Since some bottlers: Elizabeth Royte, “A Fountain on Every Corner,” New York Times, May 23, 2008.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE LAWN

  1  My students had never heard: The other constituent is 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid), which has since been outlawed because of its links to cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects.

  2  Back in our little circle: The war ended before field tests could be completed, but—as happened with so many other chemicals developed during the war—2,4-D quickly proved useful in another realm, in this case for killing broad-leaved plants.

  3  In the 1940s: Gale Peterson, “The Discovery and Development of 2,4-D,” Agricultural History, vol. 41, no. 3 (July 1967), pp. 243–54. So why do we keep using the stuff? It can’t be the science. Between 1944 (when 2,4-D was developed) and 2002, more than 750 scientific papers were published on the best ways to control weeds with chemicals. In those same 58 years, guess how many papers were published looking at achieving the same results with things like better mowing techniques, more effective fertilizers, and smarter grass seed? Just 25. See Ted Steinberg, American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (New York: Norton, 2006), p. 219. While most of the health problems associated with Agent Orange have been attributed to dioxin contamination of the compound’s other component, 2,4,5-T, which has since been banned, several forms of dioxin have also been found in 2,4-D.

  4  Here’s why: beyond its ability: Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp, “The Lawn-Chemical Economy and Its Discontents,” Antipode, vol. 35 (November 2003), pp. 955–79. In the summer of 1944, researchers sprayed 2,4-D on a dandelion-infested lawn at the federal Plant Industry Station in Beltsville, Maryland. They achieved “a complete kill.” When this news reached members of the U.S. Golf Association, they immediately tested the chemical on a golf course. It killed 80 percent of the clover, but left the bluegrass intact. How it did this was something of a mystery.

  5  At first, 2,4-D’s impact: To say that 2,4-D is everywhere is not an exaggeration. In the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, the U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2006 that pesticides were found in every one of the 139 American streams it studied. One-fifth of the streams had ten or more. And the USGS was looking only for pesticides; it wasn’t looking for flame retardants, or phthalates, or anything else. What it found was newsworthy enough, including the fact that compounds that have not been used in decades, like DDT, were found both in fish and in the streambeds of most of the rivers—even in rivers in “undeveloped” countryside. A handful of pesticides, including 2,4-D, showed up more frequently and at higher concentrations in city streams than in nonurban ones, in part because so many chemicals were running off farms and suburban lawns upstream. See U.S. Geological Survey, “Pesticides in the Nation’s Streams and Groundwater, 1992–2001: A Summary”; pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2006/3028/pdf/fs2006–3028.pdf.

  6  Given its effect: S. K. Hoar et al., “Agricultrual Herbicide Use and a Risk of Lymphoma and Soft-Tissue Sarcoma,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 256, no. 9 (1986), pp. 1141–47. Other information on 2,4-D is from ChemicalWatch Factsheet, available at www.beyondpesticides.org.

  7  Five years later: H. M. Hayes et al., “Case-Control Study of Canine Malignant Lymphoma: Positive Association with Dog Owner’s Use of 2,4-D Herbicides,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 83, no. 17 (1991), pp. 1226–31, and Marcia G. Nishioka et al., “Measuring Transport of Lawn-Applied Herbicide Acids from Turf to Home: Correlation of Dislodgeable 2,4-D Turf Residues with Carpet Dust and Carpet Surface Residues,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 30, no. 11 (1996), pp. 3313–20. “Transport of pesticides into the home carries significant implications for human exposure,” another study reports. “Carpets, house dust, and home furnishings become long-term sinks for the pesticides; the common environmental weathering factors such as wind, rain, soil microbes, and sunlight are not available for degradation. Residues on floors and surfaces can become a source of exposure for young children through the hand to mouth route of ingestion, as has been fully documented for lead exposure.” See Ruthann Rudel et al., “Phthalates, Alkylphenols, Pesticides, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, and Other Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds in Indoor Air and Dust,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 37, no. 20 (2003), pp. 4543–53, and Marcia G. Nishioka et al., “Distribution of 2,4-D in Air and on Surfaces Inside Residences After Lawn Applications: Comparing Exposure Estimates from Various Media for Young Children,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 109, no. 11 (November, 2001), pp. 1185–91.

  8  Of course, 2,4-D is just one: David Pimentel, “Silent Spring Revisited,” Journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, October 2002.

  9  A hundred years ago: Elizabeth Kolbert, “Turf War,” New Yorker, July 21, 2008.

10  I’m not sure if 50 million acres: Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens (Portland, Oreg.: Timber Press, 2007), pp. 117–88. See also Ted Steinberg, American Green, p. 4. The gasoline spill numbers can be found at www.epa.gov/glnpo/greenacres/toolkit/chap2.html.

11  And like most synthetic things: Ted Steinberg, American Green, pp. 19–24. Abe Levitt’s piece “Chats on Gardening,” printed in the Levittown Times on June 17, 1948, is reported in American Green, p. 24.

12  “Faster than a garbage can”: “The Wicked Weed,” Time, September 7, 1959.

13  Connecting (and encouraging): Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), 1962, pp. 69–75. Carson wrote acidly of the “weed killer’s philosophy” she once found in the proceedings from a weed-control conference. The author “defended the killing of good plants ‘simply because they are in bad company.’ Those who complain about killing wildflowers along roadsides reminded him, he said, of antivivisectionists ‘to who, if one were to judge by their actions, the life of a stray dog is more sacred that the lives of children.’ To the author of this paper, many of us would unquestionably be suspect, convicted of some deep perversion of character because we prefer the sight of the vetch and the clover and the wood lily in all their delicate and transient beauty to that of roadsides scorched as by fire, the shrubs brown and brittle, the bracken that once lifted high its brown lacework now withered and drooping. We would seem deplorably weak that we can tolerate the sight of such ‘weeds,’ that we do not rejoice in their eradication, that we are not filled with exultation that man has once more triumphed over miscreant nature.” Carson noted that of the 70 species of shrubs and vines commonly found on eastern roadsides, 65 are important sources of food for wildlife, including many species of bees and other insect pollinators, which depend on “weeds” like goldenrod, mustard, and dandelions for pollen and food for their young.

14  In 1968, a former garden store owner: In 1992, ChemLawn was purchased by ServiceMaster, a conglomerate founded in 1929 as a Chicago moth-proofing company, and folded into a company called TruGreen. Today, TruGreen is the largest lawn and landscaping company in the world, with 3.5 million customers. ServiceMaster also owns Merry Maids, Terminix, and Rescue Rooter. The ServiceMaster website reports that the company’s founder, Marion E. Wade, “had a strong personal faith and a desire to honor God in all he did. Translating this into the marketplace, he viewed each individual employee and customer as being made in God’s image—worthy of dignity and respect.” Eighty years later, the company’s objectives remain in place: “To honor God in all we do; To help people develop; To pursue excellence; and To grow profitably.” See P. Ranganath Nayak and John M. Ketteringham, Breakthroughs! (New York: Rawson Associates, 1986), pp. 74–81; the ServiceMaster website can be found at corporate.servicemaster.com/overview_history.asp.

15  By 1999, more than two-thirds: Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp, “The Lawn-Chemical Economy and Its Discontents,” Antipode, vol. 35 (November 2003), pp. 955–79.

16  Lawn-care companies: When First Lady Michelle Obama announced in the spring of 2009 that she wanted an organic vegetable garden installed within the White House lawn, a group called the Mid America CropLife Association, representing agribusinesses like Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, and DuPont Crop Protection, warned that growing vegetables without the use of chemicals was impractical, even elitist. “Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents,” the industry group said. “The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.” Garden chemicals, once a shield against a home owner’s being perceived as a Communist, can now be thought of as a time-saving Family Value. John Nichols, “Manure!,” Nation, May 4, 2009.

17  River-protection groups: See Chesapeake Bay Foundation, “The State of the Bay, 2007.”

18  In California, scientists are discovering: “California Sea Lions Seizures May Come from Fetal Domoic Acid Poisoning,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June 9, 2008.

19  And it’s not like Americans: John Grossman, “How Green Are Those Fairways?,” Audubon, September–October 1993.

20  Which brings me: C. Leonard et al., “ ‘Golf Ball Liver’ ”: Agent Orange Hepatitis,” Gut, vol. 40 (1997), pp. 687–88. See also J. Johnston et al., “ ‘Golf Ball Liver’ ”: A Cause of Chronic Hepatitis?,” Gut, vol. 42 (1998), pp. 143–46.

21  “I didn’t mince words”: Churchill had come to his own wisdom circuitously. Trained as an agricultural scientist in the 1960s, he was not at first opposed to using synthetic chemicals to control plant growth. Reading Silent Spring had opened his eyes, but it was a trip to the agricultural ministry in India ten years later that changed his mind. How was it, Indian scientists had asked him, that the United States could ban DDT in its own country but still sell it to developing countries like India? They accused Churchill of “being a party to the poisoning of the people of their country.” Churchill vowed to change his ways.

22  Tukey started doing some research: Jack K. Leiss and David A. Savitz, “Home Pesticide Use and Childhood Cancer: A Case-Control Study,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 85, no. 2 (February 1985), pp. 249–52.

23  Tukey also learned that exposure: “Clearly, the acute effects of pesticides are well known,” Dr. Aaron Blair of the National Cancer Institute has said. “After all, they are toxic chemicals, and they are constructed to be that way. People are poisoned by them all the time.” Sandy Rovner, “To Spray or Not to Spray,” Washington Post, July 7, 1987; see also V. F. Garry, “Pesticide Appliers, Biocides, and Birth Defects in Rural Minnesota,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 104 (1996), pp. 394–99. Domestic pesticides are regulated by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, known as FIFRA, which requires the EPA to evaluate the risks and benefits of chemicals before they are placed on the market—and also to go after companies making dubious health claims about their chemical products. There have been some odd lapses in this law over the years: diazinon, a pesticide used widely for decades (and with a similar chemical composition to nerve gas) was banned (in phases) by the EPA beginning in 2000, but retailers were allowed to continue selling it until 2004.

Oddly, the law does not apply to “professional applicators” like lawn-care companies; in a kind of Catch-22, these companies are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which says it does not enforce the laws because it prefers to defer to the EPA “in such matters because of EPA’s expertise and legislative authority.” In other words, the EPA has no control over lawn-care companies, and the FTC, which does, does nothing in deference to the EPA, which does not. And so it goes.

24  Quitting an addiction: At the time, Americans were spraying 70 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns and golf courses, all of them, presumably, registered with the EPA. But EPA registration is not a determination of safety, said Phyllis Spaeth, an assistant state attorney general in New York: “It’s a balancing act, a cost-benefit analysis. If there is a chemical need for agriculture, for example, and it’s the cheapest one, then the EPA says, ‘Well, it’s the only one that’s out there, so we’ll let them use it.’ ” ChemLawn refused to admit wrongdoing but settled the lawsuit for $100,000 and agreed not to produce ads making health claims. The ChemLawn settlement was reached around the time the Government Accountability Office released a report critical of the claims made by lawn-care companies. The report noted that regulation of lawn services fell in the gray area between the EPA and the Federal Trade Commission. A spokesman for the EPA said any lawn-care company making safety claims was “perpetrating a hoax.” Pesticides are toxic, he said, “by their very nature.”

The GAO report prompted some lawn-care companies to rein in their health claims. Lawn Doctor, a New Jersey company, stopped claiming that its products were “practically nontoxic to humans, pets and the environment.” Lawn Doctor’s promotional materials now say that the products are considered safe when they are applied according to instructions on the labels that have been approved by the federal government. “We don’t want to mislead the public,” a company spokesman said. “We have no intention of doing that.”

In January 1994, under similar pressure, DowElanco agreed to pull its advertisements claiming that the herbicides Garlon and Tordon are less toxic than aspirin and caffeine, and that the insecticide Dursban LO shows “no evidence of significant risk to the environment”—despite a warning on its own label that the poison “is toxic to birds and other wildlife and extremely toxic to fish and aquatic organisms.”

A few years later, in 1996, New York’s attorney general ordered Monsanto to pull ads that said its herbicide Roundup was “safer than table salt” and “practically nontoxic” to mammals, birds, and fish. The company withdrew the spots, but also said that the phrase in question was permissible under EPA guidelines. A year later, Monsanto recruited Cary Sharp, the horticulturist for the San Diego Zoo, to pitch Roundup on television. In the ad, Sharp described his use of Roundup at work and at home. “The sun brings life. People come to the park to see animals, not weeds,” Sharp says in the advertisement. As he talks, the camera pans across lush landscapes of exotic plants and animals. “Pulling weeds is a waste of time,” he remarks. “We use Roundup. Roundup kills the whole weed, roots included.” He ends the spot with the tagline “Roundup. No roots. No weeds. No problem.”

The $14 million ad campaign ran in forty-eight local markets as well as on national broadcast and cable networks. Monsanto also promoted its “Roundup for Species Survival” program, through which it donated a percentage of Roundup sales to local zoos and endangered-species programs. “These zoos are looking for auxiliary income,” Mike McGrath, the editor of Organic Gardening magazine, told the New York Times. “They want partnerships, and they may not care that these are chemical companies. Or maybe they believe what the chemical companies say.” See Tamar Charry, “Monsanto Recruits the Horticulturist of the San Diego Zoo to Pitch Its Popular Herbicide,” New York Times, May 29, 1997. See also Barry Meier, “Lawn Care Concern Says It Will Limit Safety Claims,” New York Times, June 30, 1990; Anne Raver, “Fertilizing Your Lawn? Look Before You Leap,” New York Times, April 12, 1994; and John Scow, “Can Lawns Be Justified?,” Time, June 3, 1991.

25  In 2003, TruGreen ChemLawn: A coalition of child advocacy and environmental groups pressured U.S. Youth Soccer to terminate the sponsorship. In a letter (complete with footnotes listing scientific studies), the groups asked Youth Soccer to cut its ties with the lawn-care company. “Clearly, TruGreen/ChemLawn wants to enlist children as allies to ask or nag their parents for lawn services so that any parent who chooses not to hire ChemLawn will be viewed by their children as not caring about youth soccer,” the letter said. “To put it simply, TruGreen/ChemLawn marketers want to make it as hard as possible for parents to say no.”

Why should parents reject the offer from ChemLawn? “Like so much that is marketed to or through children, the letter noted, ChemLawn’s pesticides can be harmful to them. Studies have linked lawn pesticides to birth defects, liver and kidney damage, and neurological disorders. Young children and adolescents are particularly susceptible to the toxic effects of lawn chemicals, [and] the use of pesticides has been linked to an increased risk of childhood illnesses including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain cancer, and leukemia. Of the three active ingredients in ChemLawn’s popular Tri-Power system, two (MCPA and Mecoprop-P) are possibly carcinogenic; the third (Dicamba) is classified by the Pesticide Action Network as a developmental and reproductive toxin.”

The campaign apparently worked; TruGreen ChemLawn pulled its sponsorship in 2004. See Erica Noonan, “Environmental Group Targets Developer,” Boston Globe, December 7, 2003.

A study conducted by University of Texas pediatricians looked at 20 children who had been referred to them by other hospitals and whom they properly diagnosed as victims of pesticide poisoning. They found that 16 of the 20 had been misdiagnosed before the referral. “Initial diagnoses included pneumonia, bronchitis, diabetes, brain aneurysm, and head trauma,” the study showed. “In each of those cases, the symptoms were actually caused by exposure to organophosphate or carbamate pesticides. Both of these types of pesticides are among those frequently selected for use by our survey respondents.” See Michael H. Surgan, Thomas Congdon et al., “Pest Control in Public Housing, Schools and Parks: Urban Children at Risk,” Environmental Protection Bureau, Office of the New York State Attorney General, August 2002. The full report can be found at www.oag.state.ny.us/bureaus/environmental/pdfs/pest_control_public_housing.pdf.

26  Even Long Island: Bruce Lambert, “A Verdant Lawn as a Health Issue: Nassau Bill Would Require Notice Before Pesticide Spraying,” New York Times, March 22, 1996. See also Long Island Neighborhood Network, www.longislandnn.org/pesticides/alert_nn2.htm#history.

27  It’s not just Canada: “Euro MPs Back Pesticide Controls,” BBC News, January 13, 2009; “EU Pesticides Will ‘Wipe Out’ Carrot Crop,” Guardian, January 4, 2009; “New EU Pesticides Law Falls Short of Real Progress,” Greenpeace European Unit, January 13, 2009.

28  The group’s lobbyists: So far, their efforts appear to have been successful. Forty-one states have these preemptive laws on the books. A California bill returning control of pesticide spraying to towns was killed after intense lobbying.

Yet there are signs of resistance. Madison, Wisconsin, banned the use of phosphorous in lawn fertilizer in 2004; one study determined that Wisconsin home owners already had enough phosphorous on their lawns for the next eight to twenty-two years if they would just leave their grass clippings on the lawn when they mowed. That same year, the seven counties that make up Minnesota’s Twin Cities banned phosphorous, and a year later, the chemical was banned in the entire state of Minnesota.

In the last few years, Westchester County, New York, which maintains 18,000 acres of public space, has effectively eliminated the use of pesticides in its parks and greatly reduced their use on golf courses. (There are 5,000 acres in the county under corporate stewardship that are not under county landscaping control.) The county has also become partners with the Grassroots Environmental Education Program, which has trained hundreds of private landscapers in nonchemical methods, and the insurance company Swiss Re’s United States headquarters in Armonk joined the program, eliminating pesticide use on its 127-acre corporate campus. “We are blessed with great water here,” the county executive told the New York Times in 2007. “There aren’t many places in the world that have such good water, so for us to contaminate it is really criminal. These pesticides get into the water, and they are unhealthy for people and animals.” See Abby Gruen, “Homeowners Seek Safer Alternatives to Pesticides,” New York Times, April 1, 2007.

In April 2009, just four months after the departure of the Bush administration, the EPA said it would order manufacturers of 67 pesticides to test whether their products disrupt hormonal systems in people or animals. The chemicals were picked not because of their acute toxicity but because of their widespread use, and the EPA plans to order that hundreds more chemicals be tested in the coming years. I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath; Congress passed a law mandating such tests in 1996. Industry is confident that the chances of problems appearing are “extremely low,” said Jay Vroom, president and chief executive of CropLife America, a major trade association and an affiiate of the lobbying group RISE. Vroom said the pesticide industry was “very confident our products will come through with flying colors.” See Juliet Eilperin, “EPA Will Mandate Tests on Pesticide Chemicals,” Washington Post, April 16, 2009.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report in 1990 that said the EPA had made little progress bringing some 24,000 pesticide products into compliance. Worse, despite a pesticide industry that made safety claims the EPA considered to be “false and misleading,” the EPA had done little to crack down on them. The lawn pesticides industry “continues to make prohibited claims that its products are safe or nontoxic,” the GAO reported. For the two most frequently used pesticides, diazinon and 2,4-D, the EPA “identified possible health effects associated with their use” but did not then push for further assessment or regulation. Until such work is done, “the public’s health may be at risk from exposure to these pesticides,” the GAO reported. (The EPA banned diazinon from use on golf courses and sod farms in 1988, after learning that the chemical had been killing geese. But it still allowed it to be sold for residential use until 2004, and it is still legal to use diazinon purchased before then. Tom Adamczyk, an EPA herbicide official, claimed that geese do not typically land on suburban lawns, and that in any case the EPA did not have the money or the personnel to act more swiftly once chemicals are proven harmful. “You can’t just yank a product off the market without incontrovertible proof that it’s harmful,” he said.) See General Accounting Office, “Lawn Care Pesticides: Risks Remain Uncertain While Prohibited Safety Claims Continue,” March 1990. The full report can be found at http://161.203.16.4/d24t8/140991.pdf.

29  “In an act”: Doug Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, p. 22.

30  So here’s a question: Y. Wang, C. Jaw, and Y. Chen, “Accumulation of 2,4-D and Glyphosate in Fish and Water,” Water Air Soil Pollution, vol. 74 (1994), pp. 397–403; B. L. Robers and H. W. Dorough, “Relative Toxicity of Chemicals to the Earthworm,” Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, vol. 3 (1984), pp. 67–78; Caroline Cox, “Herbicide Factsheet: 2,4-D; Ecological Effects,” Journal of Pesticide Reform, vol. 19, no. 3 (1999), pp 14–19.

31  The toll of suburban development: David Pimentel, “Silent Spring Revisited,” Journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, October 2002.

32  It’s not just lawn chemicals: Doug Tallamy, lecture given at Maryland’s Irvine Nature Center, August 24, 2008; Bridget Stutchbury, “Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?,” New York Times, March 30, 2008; www.stateofthebirds.org.

33  In the last year: Major efforts to restore wetlands are helping restore populations of herons, egrets, and ducks in some areas; John Hoskins, of the United States North American Bird Conservation Initiative, an umbrella group of public and private conservation efforts, says he is hopeful. “When agencies, organizations, and individual citizens work together to conserve precious resources, some really good things happen.” See Cornelia Dean, “Nearly a Third of Bird Species in U.S. Are Found Declining,” New York Times, March 20, 2008, and Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, p. 30.

34  “It is curious that the news media”: Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, pp. 25–28.

35  Tallamy’s vision is based: Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, pp. 83–85.

36  I asked Tallamy: The notion of invasive species—and what to do about them—is a complicated one. Isn’t the United States, after all, known as a country of immigrants? Wouldn’t adding plants and animals from faraway places similarly enrich our lives? The trouble is, unlike the diversity created by immigrant people, the “diversity” created by invasive plants does not enhance the native population. Take the paperbark melaleuca, an ornamental tree imported from Australia. In Florida, the paperbark has spread so aggressively in the Everglades that it has now covered hundreds of thousands of acres, and the resulting forests offer nothing to native insects, birds, or reptiles. Alligators and birds don’t nest there, and since native insects don’t feed on paperbark leaves, there is nothing for birds to eat. The addition of a single species, Tallamy notes, has caused an entire ecosystem to collapse.

Or take the Norway maple. Introduced to Philadelphia’s Morris Arboretum 250 years ago, it has spread all over the eastern seaboard. Yet for insects, and thus for birds, it is still virtually useless as a source of food. Why? Because in the 80 million years that have elapsed since the European and North American continents separated, the Norway maple has been evolving apart from North American insects. In the context of 80 million years, Tallamy says, 300 years means nothing.

Or take a plant that has become the very symbol of an East Coast spring: the azalea. Although there are plenty of native azaleas to choose from, all of which support native insects (and thus native birds), gardeners still flock to buy exotic species from Japan, which support exactly one insect: the azalea lace bug, and none of its natural predators. When lace bug populations explode, gardeners reach for their spray cans. And around and around we go.

Or take bees. There has been much in the news in the last few years about the collapse of bee colonies, a frightening development that still has scientists scratching their heads. To Tallamy, the problem has fairly simple roots. Just as agribusiness has turned cattle into commodities, forcing grass eaters to become corn eaters, so has it forced bees to survive on single sources of pollen.

“We truck bees to California from Pennsylvania, from Texas, from Georgia, and make them pollinate almonds,” he said. “But almond trees offer only one source of pollen. Everyone knows a single source of pollen is a recipe for trouble. These are very dry regions. There are no flowering plants out there. Since ‘good farming practices’ means eliminating all weeds, farmers have essentially eliminated all other sources of food.”

37  A couple of years ago: “Nurserymen are not evil people who planned to eliminate the American chestnut in the East with chestnut blight, or sugar pines in the West with blister rust, or Fraser firs in the Smokies with balsam wooly adelgids, or hardwood and fruit trees in the Pacific Northwest with citrus long-horn beetles or American beech with beech scale, or the citrus industry in Florida with Asian psyllids, or oaks throughout the country with sudden oak death disease,” Tallamy writes. “The introduction of these organisms, particularly those that occurred in the early 1900s, was an accident that happened because we had little understanding of the consequences of introducing foreign organisms with which our native plants and animals had no evolutionary experience. I am more critical of our behavior today, because we do know what can happen when we import alien plants. It has happened over and over again. Could it be that both the gardening public and the nursery industry consider the elimination of key species from entire ecosystems to be ‘collateral damage,’ in the parlance of the military, an undesirable but unavoidable consequence of creating beautiful gardens with desirable exotic ornamentals?” See Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, p. 69.

38  Native trees, Tallamy has since found: Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, p. 21.

39  On the other side: Like most evangelicals, indeed, like SafeLawns’ Paul Tukey, Doug Tallamy speaks with the passion of the convert. Some years after his eyes were opened by the bulldozer, Tallamy went off to graduate school at the University of Maryland, where he found the mysteries of exotic plants so enthralling that he would germinate seeds in the university greenhouse, then rush off and plant them all over his parents’ property: Japanese hardy oranges from Japan; royal paulownia trees from China. The trees were beautiful, and best of all, none of his neighbors had them.

At the same time, Tallamy was enrolled in graduate courses that taught him that herbivorous insects can survive only by eating plants they have evolved alongside for millions of years. To an untrained human eye, a leaf is a leaf is a leaf—why can’t insects just pick and choose? In the laboratory, Tallamy learned that insects see—and taste—things differently. If you took a pair of leaves from a white oak tree and an ailanthus (the Chinese tree of heaven) and ground them up, you’d find they had entirely different chemical constituents. Each compound gives its leaf a peculiar taste; to some insects it might be a delicacy, to others, having evolved differently, it might be a toxin. Ninety percent of leaf-eating insects can eat three plant types or fewer. But each species of insect has figured out a way, over countless generations, to digest the leaves of specific plants. More interestingly, some of the leaves that insects eat actually make the insects themselves toxic to birds. Milkweed, for example, makes monarch butterfly caterpillars so distasteful to birds that the gaudy yellow-and-black caterpillars are left to munch away undisturbed.

Worldwide, 37 percent of animal species are herbivorous insects. They convert the tissues of plants into insect tissue, and thus food for other species. In North America, 96 percent of terrestrial bird species rely on insects and arthropods (mostly spiders that eat insects) for food. Pound for pound, insects contain more protein than beef. “And because it is we who decide what plants will grow in our gardens, the responsibility for our nation’s boidiversity lies largely with us,” Tallamy writes. “We have proceeded with garden design as we always have, with no knowledge of the new role our gardens play—and alas, it shows. Throughout suburbia, we have decimated the native plant diversity that historically supported our favorite birds and animals.” See Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, pp. 104–5.

EPILOGUE

  1  In 1989, the NRDC: Doug Haddiz, “Alar as Media Event,” Columbia Journalism Review, March–April 1990.

  2  In a column in the magazine’s: Green Guide, Spring 2008.

  3  “Of all the chemical products”: Stacey Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2007), p. 137.

  4  In recent years: Milt Freudenheim, “Maker of IV System to Stop Using a Plastic,” New York Times, April 7, 1999. See also Susan Moran, “A Turn to Alternative Chemicals,” New York Times, March 26, 2008.

  5  Since 1996, the EPA: William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (New York: North Point Press, 2002); Deborah Solomon, “Calling Mr. Green,” New York Times, May 20, 2007.

  6  Last year, in an effort: Susan Moran, “Panning E-Waste for Gold,” New York Times, May 17, 2006.

  7  DuPont is working: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “Harnessing Biology, and Avoiding Oil, for Chemical Goods,” New York Times, April 9, 2008.

  8  “Hey, Ladies, I am participating”: Pingree’s email was included in a speech she gave at the Common Ground Fair, September 22, 2007.

  9  For starters, it grandfathered in: The EDF study can be found at www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/243_toxicignorance.pdf.

10  For another thing: See GAO-05–458, the United States Government Accountability Office, “Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA’s Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program,” June 13, 2005. TSCA was supposed to require companies to give ninety days’ notice before releasing a new substance onto the market, to allow the EPA to assess a chemical’s toxicity and potential for public exposure. The law did not say that companies had to generate toxicity data, so most companies didn’t. And if ninety days seems like an inadequate amount of time to make such an important call, consider this: over the last thirty years, EPA’s reviews have resulted in action being taken to reduce risks of just 11 percent of the 32,000 newly developed chemicals. More troubling, TSCA does not require companies to test new chemicals for toxicity or to gauge exposure levels, and most companies don’t. In the late 1990s, the EPA began something called the Voluntary Children’s Chemical Evaluation Program, which began by identifying 23 chemicals—of the more than 80,000 now on the market—and asking manufacturers to disclose what they knew about the chemicals’ impact on children’s health. Participation was not mandatory. Companies that did participate were asked to submit their findings to a panel of scientists, which would then declare whether the chemicals were safe for use around children. Chemical industry lobbyists called the program “breathtakingly significant.” But the program lacked credibility from the beginning. Companies regularly refused to submit what they knew or ignored requests from the EPA. In one case, the EPA asked 12 chemical companies for tests to assess the safety of benzene, a chemical used in gasoline that is known to cause leukemia, anemia, and bone marrow disease. The EPA wanted information about how the chemical can affect the developing brain and reproductive system. The chemical companies, including BP Amoco, Dow Chemical, and ExxonMobil Chemical, said they disagreed with the government’s opinion that more information was needed and refused to provide the answers. In the case of xylenes, a chemical found in gasoline, paint varnish, shellac, and cigarette smoke, the companies simply did not reply when the EPA requested further testing. Some oversight panels were stacked with scientists with ties to the chemical industry. Ten years later, the program is basically defunct. See Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, “EPA Drops Ball on Danger of Chemicals to Children,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 30, 2008.

11  Today, fully 85 percent: The EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention, which administers TSCA, is widely criticized as being too close to industry. But even if the office wanted to do its work, its budget is perpetually underfunded. Everyone from the General Accounting Office to the National Academy of Sciences to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to the EPA itself has identified areas where TSCA has fallen short, but it has not been significantly changed in thirty years. “EPA’s reviews of new chemicals provide only limited assurance that health and environmental risks are identified because TSCA does not require companies to test chemicals before they notify EPA of their intent to manufacture the chemicals,” the GAO reported in 2006. See GAO-06–1032T, United States Government Accountability Office, Chemical Regulation: Actions Are Needed to Improve the Effectiveness of EPA’s Chemical Review Program, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on the Enviornment and Public Works, August 6, 2006. See also Nena Baker, The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being (New York: North Point Press, 2008), pp. 47–48, and Mark Schapiro, “Toxic Inaction: Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up in Our Blood,” Harper’s, October 2007.

12  Before TRI, no one: See goldmanprize.org/node/83.

13  And what a lot they were: Matthew L. Wald, “A Drop in Toxic Emissions and a Rise in PCB Disposal,” New York Times, March 20, 2009.

14  It might not surprise you: U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Toxic Pollution and Health: An Analysis of Toxic Chemicals Released in Communities Across the United States,” March 2007, pp. 4–5.

15  Ten years ago, the EPA: Yana Kucker and Meghan Purvis, “Body of Evidence: New Science in the Debate Over Toxic Flame Retardants and Our Health,” National Association of State PIRGs and the Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2004.

16  Though critics of REACH: “Toxic Lobby: How the Chemicals Industry Is Trying to Kill REACH,” Greenpeace, May 2006; www.greenpeace.org/toxiclobby.

17  To give you an idea: Peter Waldman, “From Ingredient in Cosmetics, Toys, a Safety Concern,” Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2005. It’s not as if the change in Europe came easily. An article in the Guardian newspaper warned that REACH would endanger 2 million jobs and send thousands more overseas to less-regulated countries like China. British and other European chemicals firms warned that the proposals were “completely unworkable” and would devastate huge swaths of Europe’s chemicals industry. REACH was “going to de-industrialise Europe,” said Eggert Voscherau, president of Cefic, the chemical industry’s EU lobbying group. “European industry, including the chemicals industry, must not be a test laboratory for a bureaucratic regulatory experiment.” Such rhetoric did not sit well with some legislators, who said the chemicals industry was using fear to protect itself from oversight. “Too many in the chemicals industry, and particularly its German lobbying arm, seem to believe that if you are going to tell a lie, then lie big,” said Chris Davies, a liberal English member of the European Parliament. “The costs of REACH have been grossly exaggerated from beginning to end. There are still Members here who reject the very idea that industry should bear the burden of proving that the chemicals it puts on the market are safe. There are still Members here who would strip away the testing requirements almost completely: ‘Trust us, they are chemical companies’ is their argument. There are Members here who still believe that chemicals of high concern should continue to be sold even when safer substitutes are readily available.” See www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,998303,00.html; www.europarl.org.uk/news/items2005/november17reach.htm; “Toxic Lobby: How the Chemicals Industry Is Trying to Kill REACH,” Greenpeace, May 2006; www.greenpeace.org/toxiclobby.

18  Far from waiting: Greg Lebedev, “Chemistry Means Business,” keynote address for Pittsburgh Chemical Day, May 11, 2004, reprinted in “Toxic Lobby: How the Chemicals Industry Is Trying to Kill REACH,” Greenpeace, May 2006; www.greenpeace.org/toxiclobby.

19  A Commerce Department memo: For an excellent summary of the REACH debate, see Mark Schapiro, “Toxic Inaction: Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up in Our Blood,” Harper’s, October 2007.

20  American public health groups: From “A Special Case Study: The Chemical Industry, the Bush Administration, and European Efforts to Regulate Chemicals,” U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform—Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division, April 2004; Chemical and Engineering News, April 6, 2004.

21  But California is one place: Wyatt Andrews, CBS News, May 19, 2008.

22  In May 2007: The growing consumer and legislative antagonism to toxic flame retardants has already pressured companies to develop alternative compounds. Some companies, such as the Swedish home furnishing giant IKEA, voluntarily stopped producing products that contain PBDEs ten years ago and are putting pressure on product distributors to start producing alternatives. (“A third of your life is spent sleeping,” IKEA’s latest brochure reminds you.) Two of the largest manufacturers of brominated flame retardants, Albemarle and Great Lakes Chemical, have moved to develop alternatives to octa and penta. Great Lakes claims that its alternatives will not bioaccumulate. If you’d rather not take a chance on alternative synthetics, a host of companies offer mattresses and couches made with natural latex. See “Albemarle Launches Penta-BDE Alternative,” Chemical Week, vol. 165, no. 42 (November 19, 2003); “Great Lakes Agrees to Flame Retardant Phaseout,” Chemical Week, vol. 165, no. 41 (November 12, 2003). For more information on safer electronics, check www.safer-products.org. Toshiba discontinued production of plastics containing PBDEs in its computers and other electronic products. Ericsson has banned deca and other PBDEs from its cell phones and found replacements at comparable costs. Other companies—Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, and Sony among them—are doing the same. What do safer flame retardants cost a consumer? Estimates are that using alternatives would add as little as $4 to a twenty-seven-inch television selling for $300.

23  The bill was supported: John Richardson, “Maine to Consider Tracking Toxins in Toys, Products,” Portland Press Herald, February 27, 2008.

24  During the hearing, Matt Prindiville: You can read Matt Prindiville’s testimony at www.nrcm.org/news_detail.asp?news=2200.

25  “What’s important is that”: Portland Press Herald, April 17, 2008. The bill was not as complete as some advocates would have liked. It exempted products made by the pulp and paper industry, for example, as well as food and beverage packaging that is not marketed to children. Of course, compiling all this data—scientific studies of toxics, as well as safer alternatives—will take a great deal of money, and Maine is not a wealthy state. So for now, change will continue to come slowly.

26  There are other positive signs: Peter Waldman, “Common Industrial Chemicals in Tiny Doses Raise Health Issue,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2005.

27  None of this can come too soon: Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. xviii.

APPENDIX

  1  When it comes to general rules: Ellen Sandbeck, Green Housekeeping(New York: Scribner, 2007), p. 4.

  2  Be careful when shopping: Stacey Malkan, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2007), pp. 119–20.