Download or read book Exposure written by Robert Bilott and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For Erin Brockovich fans, a David vs. Goliath tale with a twist” (The New York Times Book Review)—the incredible true story of the lawyer who spent two decades building a case against DuPont for its use of the hazardous chemical PFOA, uncovering the worst case of environmental contamination in history—affecting virtually every person on the planet—and the conspiracy that kept it a secret for sixty years. The story that inspired Dark Waters, the major motion picture from Focus Features starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, directed by Todd Haynes. 1998: Rob Bilott is a young lawyer specializing in helping big corporations stay on the right side of environmental laws and regulations. Then he gets a phone call from a West Virginia farmer named Earl Tennant, who is convinced the creek on his property is being poisoned by runoff from a neighboring DuPont landfill, causing his cattle and the surrounding wildlife to die in hideous ways. Earl hasn’t even been able to get a water sample tested by any state or federal regulatory agency or find a local lawyer willing to take the case. As soon as they hear the name DuPont—the area’s largest employer—they shut him down. Once Rob sees the thick, foamy water that bubbles into the creek, the gruesome effects it seems to have on livestock, and the disturbing frequency of cancer and other health problems in the area, he’s persuaded to fight against the type of corporation his firm routinely represents. After intense legal wrangling, Rob ultimately gains access to hundreds of thousands of pages of DuPont documents, some of them fifty years old, that reveal the company has been holding onto decades of studies proving the harmful effects of a chemical called PFOA, used in making Teflon. PFOA is often called a “forever chemical,” because once in the environment, it does not break down or degrade for millions of years, contaminating the planet forever. The case of one farmer soon spawns a class action suit on behalf of seventy thousand residents—and the shocking realization that virtually every person on the planet has been exposed to PFOA and carries the chemical in his or her blood. What emerges is a riveting legal drama “in the grand tradition of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action” (Booklist, starred review) about malice and manipulation, the failings of environmental regulation; and one lawyer’s twenty-year struggle to expose the truth about this previously unknown—and still unregulated—chemical that we all have inside us.

Download or read book Lake Effect written by Nancy A. Nichols and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On her deathbed, Sue asked her sister for one thing: to write about the connection between the industrial pollution in their hometown and the rare cancer that was killing her. Fulfilling that promise has been Nancy Nichols’ mission for more than a decade. Lake Effect is the story of her investigation. It reaches back to their childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, an industrial town on Lake Michigan once known for good factory jobs and great fishing. Now Waukegan is famous for its Superfund sites: as one resident put it, asbestos to the north, PCBs to the south. Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Nichols interviewed dozens of scientists, doctors, and environmentalists to determine if these pollutants could have played a role in her sister’s death. While researching Sue’s cancer, she discovered her own: a vicious though treatable form of pancreatic cancer. Doctors and even family urged her to forget causes and concentrate on cures, but Nichols knew that it was relentless questioning that had led to her diagnosis. And that it is questioning—by government as well as individuals—that could save other lives. Lake Effect challenges us to ask why. It is the fulfillment of a sister’s promise. And it is a call to stop the pollution that is endangering the health of all our families.

Download or read book Toxic Heritage written by Elizabeth Kryder-Reid and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-21 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toxic Heritage addresses the heritage value of contamination and toxic sites and provides the first in-depth examination of toxic heritage as a global issue. Bringing together case studies, visual essays, and substantive chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, the volume provides a critical framing of the globally expanding field of toxic heritage. Authors from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies examine toxic heritage as both a material phenomenon and a concept. Organized into five thematic sections, the book explores the meaning and significance of toxic heritage, politics, narratives, affected communities, and activist approaches and interventions. It identifies critical issues and highlights areas of emerging research on the intersections of environmental harm with formal and informal memory practices, while also highlighting the resilience, advocacy, and creativity of communities, scholars, and heritage professionals in responding to the current environmental crises. Toxic Heritage is useful and relevant to scholars and students working across a range of disciplines, including heritage studies, environmental science, archaeology, anthropology, and geography.

Download or read book Toxic Legacy written by Stephanie Seneff and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a “Best Book of the Year” by Kirkus Reviews “Urgent and eye-opening, the book serves as a loud-and-clear alarm.”―The Boston Globe Named an "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice From an MIT scientist, mounting evidence that the active ingredient in the world’s most commonly used weedkiller is contributing to skyrocketing rates of chronic disease. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the most commonly used weedkiller in the world. Over 300 million pounds of glyphosate-based herbicide are sprayed on farms―and food―every year. Agrochemical companies claim that glyphosate is safe for humans, animals, and the environment. But emerging scientific research on glyphosate’s deadly disruption of the gut microbiome, its crippling effect on protein synthesis, and its impact on the body’s ability to use and transport sulfur―not to mention several landmark legal cases―tells a very different story. In Toxic Legacy, senior research scientist Stephanie Seneff, PhD, delivers compelling evidence based on countless published, peer-reviewed studies―all in frank, illuminating, and always accessible language. As Rachel Carson did with DDT in the 1960’s with Silent Spring, Seneff sounds the alarm on glyphosate, giving you guidance on simple changes you can make right now and essential information you need to protect your health, your family’s health, and the planet on which we all depend. “A game-changer that we would be foolish to ignore.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Toxic Legacy will stand shoulder to shoulder with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. [This is] unquestionably, one of the most important books of our time.”―David Perlmutter, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grain Brain “Dr. Seneff’s work will change the way we all think about food.”―Mark Hyman, MD, New York Times bestselling author

Download or read book Go Toxic Free written by Anna Turns and published by Michael O'Mara Books. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking you on an in-depth tour of your everyday household products, Anna Turns reveals the harmful chemicals that lurk inside your home, the damage they can cause and helpful swaps and tips to avoid them wherever you can.

Download or read book Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential, cornerstone book of modern environmentalism is now offered in a handsome 40th anniversary edition which features a new Introduction by activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new Afterword by Carson biographer Linda Lear.

Download or read book Stain resistant Nonstick Waterproof and Lethal written by Callie Lyons and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2007 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's everywhere. It's toxic. And it lasts forever." Asbestos? Nuclear waste? No. This statement, made by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003, refers to a little-known but ubiquitous chemical compound whose trade name is C8. Manufactured by DuPont, it is used in the making of a plethora of stain-resistant, waterproof, and grease-resistant consumer products. The first members of the public to hear about C8, in January 2002, were the residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley, whose water supplies were found to contain detectable amounts. The EPA launched a multi-agency review of the manmade chemical, which became the largest investigation of its kind. As a local journalist, Lyons has covered the C8 story from the beginning. Here she explains how the danger of C8 first came to light, how the investigation progressed, and what remedies have been initiated.

Download or read book Toxic Archipelago written by Brett L. Walker and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every person on the planet is entangled in a web of ecological relationships that link farms and factories with human consumers. Our lives depend on these relationships -- and are imperiled by them as well. Nowhere is this truer than on the Japanese archipelago. During the nineteenth century, Japan saw the rise of Homo sapiens industrialis, a new breed of human transformed by an engineered, industrialized, and poisonous environment. Toxins moved freely from mines, factory sites, and rice paddies into human bodies. Toxic Archipelago explores how toxic pollution works its way into porous human bodies and brings unimaginable pain to some of them. Brett Walker examines startling case studies of industrial toxins that know no boundaries: deaths from insecticide contaminations; poisonings from copper, zinc, and lead mining; congenital deformities from methylmercury factory effluents; and lung diseases from sulfur dioxide and asbestos. This powerful, probing book demonstrates how the Japanese archipelago has become industrialized over the last two hundred years -- and how people and the environment have suffered as a consequence.

Download or read book Toxicological Effects of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances written by Jamie C. DeWitt and published by Humana Press. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book serves as a timely and comprehensive overview of the latest science for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), covering the development of methods for assessing PFASs in biological fluids and tissues as well as the current knowledge regarding their toxicity to vertebrate organisms. This book includes chapters on human and wildlife exposure/body burdens, reviews of metabolism and toxicological effects by organ system/developmental stage and aspects of PFAS toxicity that are driving PFAS research and regulatory oversight. Toxicological Effects of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances provide critical assessments of the most controversial topics surrounding toxicological evaluation of PFASs to give readers an expert perspective on the issues. Emphasis is placed on the integration of modes and mechanisms of action with functional endpoints that are relevant to human and wildlife health. This book will be a useful resource for toxicologists, environmental chemists, risk assessors and researchers with an interest in the class of compounds known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Download or read book Deceit and Denial written by Gerald Markowitz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental Health I Health Care Policy I History Of Medicine --

Download or read book Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental engineers support the well-being of people and the planet in areas where the two intersect. Over the decades the field has improved countless lives through innovative systems for delivering water, treating waste, and preventing and remediating pollution in air, water, and soil. These achievements are a testament to the multidisciplinary, pragmatic, systems-oriented approach that characterizes environmental engineering. Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges outlines the crucial role for environmental engineers in this period of dramatic growth and change. The report identifies five pressing challenges of the 21st century that environmental engineers are uniquely poised to help advance: sustainably supply food, water, and energy; curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; design a future without pollution and waste; create efficient, healthy, resilient cities; and foster informed decisions and actions.

Download or read book How to Sell a Poison written by Elena Conis and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an infamous poison that left toxic bodies and decimated wildlife in its wake is also a cautionary tale about how corporations stoke the flames of science denialism for profit. The chemical compound DDT first earned fame during World War II by wiping out insects that caused disease and boosting Allied forces to victory. Americans granted it a hero’s homecoming, spraying it on everything from crops and livestock to cupboards and curtains. Then, in 1972, it was banned in the US. But decades after that, a cry arose to demand its return. This is the sweeping narrative of generations of Americans who struggled to make sense of the notorious chemical’s risks and benefits. Historian Elena Conis follows DDT from postwar farms, factories, and suburban enclaves to the floors of Congress and tony social clubs, where industry barons met with Madison Avenue brain trusts to figure out how to sell the idea that a little poison in our food and bodies was nothing to worry about. In an age of spreading misinformation on issues including pesticides, vaccines, and climate change, Conis shows that we need new ways of communicating about science—as a constantly evolving discipline, not an immutable collection of facts—before it’s too late.

Download or read book Pastoral Capitalism written by Louise A. Mozingo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-05-27 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How business appropriated the pastoral landscape, as seen in the corporate campus, the corporate estate, and the office park. By the end of the twentieth century, America's suburbs contained more office space than its central cities. Many of these corporate workplaces were surrounded, somewhat incongruously, by verdant vistas of broad lawns and leafy trees. In Pastoral Capitalism, Louise Mozingo describes the evolution of these central (but often ignored) features of postwar urbanism in the context of the modern capitalist enterprise. These new suburban corporate landscapes emerged from a historical moment when corporations reconceived their management structures, the city decentralized and dispersed into low-density, auto-dependent peripheries, and the pastoral—in the form of leafy residential suburbs—triumphed as an American ideal. Greenness, writes Mozingo, was associated with goodness, and pastoral capitalism appropriated the suburb's aesthetics and moral code. Like the lawn-proud suburban homeowner, corporations understood a pastoral landscape's capacity to communicate identity, status, and right-mindedness. Mozingo distinguishes among three forms of corporate landscapes—the corporate campus, the corporate estate, and the office park—and examines suburban corporate landscapes built and inhabited by such companies as Bell Labs, General Motors, Deere & Company, and Microsoft. She also considers the globalization of pastoral capitalism in Europe and the developing world including Singapore, India, and China. Mozingo argues that, even as it is proliferating, pastoral capitalism needs redesign, as do many of our metropolitan forms, for pressing social, cultural, political, and environmental reasons. Future transformations are impossible, however, unless we understand the past. Pastoral Capitalism offers an indispensible chapter in urban history, examining not only the design of corporate landscapes but also the economic, social, and cultural models that determined their form.

Download or read book Count Down written by Shanna H. Swan and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing—and endangering—human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale, from renowned epidemiologist Shanna Swan. In 2017, author Shanna Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study. They found that over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. They came to this conclusion after examining 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. The result sent shockwaves around the globe—but the story didn’t end there. It turns out our sexual development is changing in broader ways, for both men and women and even other species, and that the modern world is on pace to become an infertile one. How and why could this happen? What is hijacking our fertility and our health? Count Down unpacks these questions, revealing what Swan and other researchers have learned about how both lifestyle and chemical exposures are affecting our fertility, sexual development—potentially including the increase in gender fluidity—and general health as a species. Engagingly explaining the science and repercussions of these worldwide threats and providing simple and practical guidelines for effectively avoiding chemical goods (from water bottles to shaving cream) both as individuals and societies, Count Down is at once an urgent wake-up call, an illuminating read, and a vital tool for the protection of our future.

Download or read book Rebugging the Planet written by Vicki Hird and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a lovely little book that could and should have a big impact...Let’s all get rebugging right away!"—Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Meet the intelligent insects, marvelous minibeasts, and inspirational invertebrates that help shape our planet—and discover how you can help them help us by rebugging your attitude today! Remember when there were bugs on your windshield? Ever wonder where they went? We need to act now if we are to help the insects survive. Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Attenborough, and Elizabeth Kolbert are but a few voices championing the rewilding of our world. Rebugging the Planet explains how we are headed toward “insectageddon” with a rate of insect extinction eight times faster than that of mammals or birds, and gives us crucial information to help all those essential creepy-crawlies flourish once more. Author Vicki Hird passionately demonstrates how insects and invertebrates are the cornerstone of our global ecosystem. They pollinate plants, feed birds, support and defend our food crops, and clean our water systems. They are also beautiful, inventive, and economically invaluable—bees, for example, contribute an estimated $235 to $577 billion to the US economy annually, according to Forbes. Rebugging the Planet shows us small changes we can make to have a big impact on our littlest allies: Learn how to rewild parks, schools, sidewalks, roadsides, and other green spaces. Leave your garden to grow a little wild and plant weedkiller-free, wildlife-friendly plants. Take your kids on a minibeast treasure hunt and learn how to build bug palaces. Make bug-friendly choices with your food and support good farming practices Begin to understand how reducing inequality and poverty will help nature and wildlife too—it’s all connected. So do your part and start rebugging today! The bees, ants, earthworms, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, ladybugs, snails, and slugs will thank you—and our planet will thank you too.

Download or read book Spills of Diluted Bitumen from Pipelines written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diluted bitumen has been transported by pipeline in the United States for more than 40 years, with the amount increasing recently as a result of improved extraction technologies and resulting increases in production and exportation of Canadian diluted bitumen. The increased importation of Canadian diluted bitumen to the United States has strained the existing pipeline capacity and contributed to the expansion of pipeline mileage over the past 5 years. Although rising North American crude oil production has resulted in greater transport of crude oil by rail or tanker, oil pipelines continue to deliver the vast majority of crude oil supplies to U.S. refineries. Spills of Diluted Bitumen from Pipelines examines the current state of knowledge and identifies the relevant properties and characteristics of the transport, fate, and effects of diluted bitumen and commonly transported crude oils when spilled in the environment. This report assesses whether the differences between properties of diluted bitumen and those of other commonly transported crude oils warrant modifications to the regulations governing spill response plans and cleanup. Given the nature of pipeline operations, response planning, and the oil industry, the recommendations outlined in this study are broadly applicable to other modes of transportation as well.

Download or read book Plastic written by Susan Freinkel and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This eloquent, elegant book thoughtfully plumbs the . . . consequences of our dependence on plastics” (The Boston Globe, A Best Nonfiction Book of 2011). From pacemakers to disposable bags, plastic built the modern world. But a century into our love affair, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy relationship. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this eye-opening book, we’re at a crisis point. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. We’re drowning in the stuff, and we need to start making some hard choices. Freinkel tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: a comb, a chair, a Frisbee, an IV bag, a disposable lighter, a grocery bag, a soda bottle, and a credit card. With a blend of lively anecdotes and analysis, she sifts through scientific studies and economic data, reporting from China and across the United States to assess the real impact of plastic on our lives. Her conclusion is severe, but not without hope. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love, hate, and can’t seem to live without. “When you write about something so ubiquitous as plastic, you must be prepared to write in several modes, and Freinkel rises to this task. . . . She manages to render the most dull chemical reaction into vigorous, breathless sentences.” —SF Gate “Freinkel’s smart, well-written analysis of this love-hate relationship is likely to make plastic lovers take pause, plastic haters reluctantly realize its value, and all of us understand the importance of individual action, political will, and technological innovation in weaning us off our addiction to synthetics.” —Publishers Weekly “A compulsively interesting story. Buy it (with cash).” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “What a great read—rigorous, smart, inspiring, and as seductive as plastic itself.” —Karim Rashid, designer