Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES explores why our environment has become saturated with synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormones, and asks what we can do to protect human and environmental health. Since World War II, these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems, yet our government has largely failed to regulate them.
Toxic Bodies shows that the industry and the federal government knew as early as the 1940s that these chemicals caused cancer and disrupted sexual development. Yet they were approved by regulatory agencies and widely marketed to producers and consumers. Toxic Bodies explores how scientific uncertainty has been manipulated to delay regulation, and shows how we can use history to make better policy.
Toxic Bodies shows that the industry and the federal government knew as early as the 1940s that these chemicals caused cancer and disrupted sexual development. Yet they were approved by regulatory agencies and widely marketed to producers and consumers. Toxic Bodies explores how scientific uncertainty has been manipulated to delay regulation, and shows how we can use history to make better policy.
Praise for Toxic Bodies
"Like Carson, Langston uses lively and even lyrical writing ... to tell the story of the risks posed by synthetic compounds currently found in pesticides, pharmaceuticals and plastics, such as BPA, which the Wisconsin Legislature banned in children’s products earlier this year." --SHAWN DOHERTY | The Capital Times: read full article "Our Toxic Bodies" here
"It jars the reader when Nancy Langston declares the bodies of American women to be toxic waste sites, but that is precisely what she does. Since World War II, the United States has saturated foods, ecosystems, and bodies with endocrine-disrupting chemicals, with little regulation. These chemicals haunt American landscapes like ghosts. Langston knows these ghosts all too well, and a frightening personal story also haunts these pages. Toxic Bodies masterfully weaves the historical with the personal, forcing the reader to wonder what is mutating in his or her own body." Brett L. Walker, Regent's Professor of History and Department Chair, Montana State University, Bozeman
"Nancy Langston has given us a deeply disturbing analysis of government neglect of synthetic hormones. By taking us back to the beginning of the twentieth century, she traces the failure of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to protect society from hormonally active drugs, growth stimulants fed to livestock, and chemical ingredients in plastics. This is a wonderful history, woven together by deep insight into both public health and ecology, one with many lessons for modern precautionary policy.You owe it to your children and future generations to pay attention to this book. And we all owe Langston a debt of gratitude for illuminating a global hormonal chemical experiment that is wildly out of control." John Wargo, Professor of Risk Analysis and Political Science, Yale University
"It jars the reader when Nancy Langston declares the bodies of American women to be toxic waste sites, but that is precisely what she does. Since World War II, the United States has saturated foods, ecosystems, and bodies with endocrine-disrupting chemicals, with little regulation. These chemicals haunt American landscapes like ghosts. Langston knows these ghosts all too well, and a frightening personal story also haunts these pages. Toxic Bodies masterfully weaves the historical with the personal, forcing the reader to wonder what is mutating in his or her own body." Brett L. Walker, Regent's Professor of History and Department Chair, Montana State University, Bozeman
"Nancy Langston has given us a deeply disturbing analysis of government neglect of synthetic hormones. By taking us back to the beginning of the twentieth century, she traces the failure of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to protect society from hormonally active drugs, growth stimulants fed to livestock, and chemical ingredients in plastics. This is a wonderful history, woven together by deep insight into both public health and ecology, one with many lessons for modern precautionary policy.You owe it to your children and future generations to pay attention to this book. And we all owe Langston a debt of gratitude for illuminating a global hormonal chemical experiment that is wildly out of control." John Wargo, Professor of Risk Analysis and Political Science, Yale University
UA-7818383-1
