Download E-books Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead PDF

By Lydia Denworth

They did not begin as environmental warriors. Clair Patterson was once a geochemist occupied with selecting the age of the Earth. Herbert Needleman was once a pediatrician treating inner-city youngsters. yet within the chemistry lab and the medical institution ward, they met a standard enemy: lead. It used to be actually everywhere-in gas and paint, in fact, but additionally in water pipes and nutrition cans, toothpaste tubes and toys, ceramics and cosmetics, jewellery and batteries. notwithstanding few humans nervous approximately it on the time, lead was once additionally poisonous.

In Toxic Truth, journalist Lydia Denworth tells the little-known tales of those males who have been one of the first to query the knowledge of filling the area with one of these damaging steel. Denworth follows them from the ice and snow of Antarctica to the schoolyards of Philadelphia and Boston as they exposed the enormity of the matter and validated the irreparable damage lead was once doing to young ones. In heated meetings and courtrooms, the halls of Congress and on the Environmental security enterprise, the scientist and surgeon have been compelled to shield their careers and reputations within the face of fabulous competition. It took braveness, ardour, and resolution to be successful opposed to entrenched company pursuits and politicized govt bureaucracies. yet Patterson, Needleman, and their allies did ultimately get the lead out - because it used to be faraway from fuel, paint, and nutrients cans within the Seventies, the extent of lead in american citizens' our bodies has dropped ninety percentage. Their luck deals a lesson within the risks of placing financial priorities over public well-being, and a reminder of ways science-and individuals-can swap the realm.

The basic questions raised through this battle-what constitutes sickness, the best way to degree medical independence, and the way to quantify appropriate risk-echo in each environmental factor of this day: from the plastic used to make water bottles to greenhouse gasoline emissions. And the main simple question-how a lot will we want to know approximately what we installed our environment-is might be extra correct this day than it has ever been.

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