Reviews
"Like Carson, Langston uses lively and even lyrical writing and what among academics is a rare talent for putting a human face on complex scientific data, 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
"As an environmental historian, Langston sees a similar pattern in the lack of regulation between DES in the past and endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenol A today. The purpose of Langston’s book is to point out how lessons from history can be used to make better policy, as well as “the need for intelligent regulation to protect public health and the environment.” She challenges readers to stay informed, take action, and support government agencies in their struggle in applying the precautionary principle to protect human health. She convincingly advocates that public health concerns should take precedence over short-term economic gains in the face of -scientific uncertainty."
--RETHA NEWBOLD | Environmental Health Perspectives: read full review 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
"In this fascinating and sometimes terrifying book, Nancy Langston traces the history of DES, one of the earliest endocrine-disrupting chemicals to be widely released into the environment...and into the bodies of human beings and other organisms. It is a cautionary tale with profound implications for all of us."
--William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West and Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
"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
"The historical slant is indeed unique. . . . the manuscript is well documented and written in a way that conveys the science in an understandable fashion."
--Dixie Mills, M.D., F.A.C.S., Medical Director, Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation
--SHAWN DOHERTY | The Capital Times:read full article "Our Toxic Bodies" here
"As an environmental historian, Langston sees a similar pattern in the lack of regulation between DES in the past and endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenol A today. The purpose of Langston’s book is to point out how lessons from history can be used to make better policy, as well as “the need for intelligent regulation to protect public health and the environment.” She challenges readers to stay informed, take action, and support government agencies in their struggle in applying the precautionary principle to protect human health. She convincingly advocates that public health concerns should take precedence over short-term economic gains in the face of -scientific uncertainty."
--RETHA NEWBOLD | Environmental Health Perspectives: read full review 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
"In this fascinating and sometimes terrifying book, Nancy Langston traces the history of DES, one of the earliest endocrine-disrupting chemicals to be widely released into the environment...and into the bodies of human beings and other organisms. It is a cautionary tale with profound implications for all of us."
--William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West and Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
"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
"The historical slant is indeed unique. . . . the manuscript is well documented and written in a way that conveys the science in an understandable fashion."
--Dixie Mills, M.D., F.A.C.S., Medical Director, Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation
Lessons of DES and DDT Are Unheeded ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORIAN WARNS THAT RISK FROM SIMILAR CHEMICALS IS WIDESPREAD
Today, we know that the hormone-disrupting drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) was a public health catastrophe. Promoted for use in every pregnancy beginning in the 1940s, this estrogenic drug caused cancer in exposed fetuses and is still causing reproductive problems in their children and grandchildren. DES was also widely used to fatten chickens and beef cattle. Residues in meat and poultry were ingested by nearly every American from the 1950s through the 1970s. Even though workers who handled DES at processing plants developed reduced virility, disturbed menstrual cycles, and cancers, government agencies assured the public that DES was safe. For 30 years, regulatory officials failed to demand appropriate studies, ignored or concealed existing data, and declined to restrict DES without proof that it caused harm.
What have we learned from DES and from other hormone disruptors such as DDT that have damaged human health? Are adequate precautions in place today to prevent new disasters? In Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, leading environmental historian Nancy Langston shows that the answers to these questions are frightening ones. While DES has been banned, we are awash in a sea of similar chemicals, and the impacts on human health are likely to be profound.
Endocrine disruptors—chemicals that disrupt hormones and alter sexual development—are not rare. They are among the most common chemicals produced today, and include pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and plastics such as BPA. Endocrine disruptors are widely used to fatten beef, to package foods and beverages, and throughout our homes. They are found in our rivers and streams and in the tissues of almost every person.
These chemicals are under-studied and misunderstood, Langston warns. Today’s assurances of safety are based upon the same faulty assumptions that kept DES on the market. Our regulatory model assumes that all chemicals are more toxic at high doses than at low ones, and that toxicity is immediately apparent. Yet endocrine disruptors can cause terrible harm at very low doses, especially to developing fetuses and infants, and the effects of exposure may not be apparent until maturity or even until future generations show problems.
So how can we learn from the past and protect ourselves and our children from endocrine disruptors? The key, Langston argues, is the precautionary principle: chemicals should be proven safe before they are approved and distributed. Before DES won FDA approval in 1941, researchers knew it caused cancer and sexual development problems in animals. The FDA initially rejected the drug, adopting the precautionary principle sixty years before that term came into common usage. Yet by 1947, the agency had abandoned its position of precaution, insisting that critics prove DES caused harm, rather than insisting drug companies prove DES was safe.
Given what has been known since the 1940s about the risks of endocrine disrupting chemicals, why have federal regulatory agencies done so little to protect public and environmental health? A general hostility to regulation, a focus on economic interests rather than patient interests, and a misunderstanding of endocrine-disrupting chemicals have together delayed action that could save lives. Political, economic, cultural, and scientific pressures all contributed to the retreat from precaution, Langston argues, and these pressures continue to infect our federal agencies. Toxic Bodies calls upon all of us to consider the lessons of history, which hold enormous relevance for our own health and the health of future generations.
For more information, contact Liz Pelton, 410-467-0989,
lizpelton@aol.com
Today, we know that the hormone-disrupting drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) was a public health catastrophe. Promoted for use in every pregnancy beginning in the 1940s, this estrogenic drug caused cancer in exposed fetuses and is still causing reproductive problems in their children and grandchildren. DES was also widely used to fatten chickens and beef cattle. Residues in meat and poultry were ingested by nearly every American from the 1950s through the 1970s. Even though workers who handled DES at processing plants developed reduced virility, disturbed menstrual cycles, and cancers, government agencies assured the public that DES was safe. For 30 years, regulatory officials failed to demand appropriate studies, ignored or concealed existing data, and declined to restrict DES without proof that it caused harm.
What have we learned from DES and from other hormone disruptors such as DDT that have damaged human health? Are adequate precautions in place today to prevent new disasters? In Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, leading environmental historian Nancy Langston shows that the answers to these questions are frightening ones. While DES has been banned, we are awash in a sea of similar chemicals, and the impacts on human health are likely to be profound.
Endocrine disruptors—chemicals that disrupt hormones and alter sexual development—are not rare. They are among the most common chemicals produced today, and include pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and plastics such as BPA. Endocrine disruptors are widely used to fatten beef, to package foods and beverages, and throughout our homes. They are found in our rivers and streams and in the tissues of almost every person.
These chemicals are under-studied and misunderstood, Langston warns. Today’s assurances of safety are based upon the same faulty assumptions that kept DES on the market. Our regulatory model assumes that all chemicals are more toxic at high doses than at low ones, and that toxicity is immediately apparent. Yet endocrine disruptors can cause terrible harm at very low doses, especially to developing fetuses and infants, and the effects of exposure may not be apparent until maturity or even until future generations show problems.
So how can we learn from the past and protect ourselves and our children from endocrine disruptors? The key, Langston argues, is the precautionary principle: chemicals should be proven safe before they are approved and distributed. Before DES won FDA approval in 1941, researchers knew it caused cancer and sexual development problems in animals. The FDA initially rejected the drug, adopting the precautionary principle sixty years before that term came into common usage. Yet by 1947, the agency had abandoned its position of precaution, insisting that critics prove DES caused harm, rather than insisting drug companies prove DES was safe.
Given what has been known since the 1940s about the risks of endocrine disrupting chemicals, why have federal regulatory agencies done so little to protect public and environmental health? A general hostility to regulation, a focus on economic interests rather than patient interests, and a misunderstanding of endocrine-disrupting chemicals have together delayed action that could save lives. Political, economic, cultural, and scientific pressures all contributed to the retreat from precaution, Langston argues, and these pressures continue to infect our federal agencies. Toxic Bodies calls upon all of us to consider the lessons of history, which hold enormous relevance for our own health and the health of future generations.
For more information, contact Liz Pelton, 410-467-0989,
lizpelton@aol.com
NEW BOOK EXPLORES WIDESPREAD, TROUBLING LEGACY OF SYNTHETIC CHEMICALS
"Midway through, she realized the story she was telling was likely her own as well.
In Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, published March 2 by Yale University Press, Langston chronicles the history of synthetic hormone-disrupting chemicals, an industry that exploded after World War II. The result is a fascinating but horrifying account of how the vast majority of the American population became unwitting participants in a large and ultimately disastrous public health experiment.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals encompass a range of products including synthetic hormones, polychlorinated biphenyls ( PCBs ), pesticides such as DDT, and plastic compounds like bisphenol A ( BPA ) and are nearly ubiquitous in the developed world. Exposure to these and related compounds has been linked to a rash of health problems including birth defects, reproductive problems, and several cancers.
Though some of these chemicals, such as DDT and thalidomide, have since been banned in the U.S., many others still permeate our lives. And despite their checkered history, government regulation of such toxic chemicals has been spotty and often based on faulty assumptions, argues Langston, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor with joint appointments in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Langston was inspired to explore the topic by a graduate student who grew up near the Fox River in eastern Wisconsin, a waterway lined with paper mills and so contaminated with PCBs and other industrial chemicals that it is now a Superfund site. After decades of swimming in the water and eating local fish, the woman was facing a terrible dilemma: Now knowing that her body was essentially a toxic waste site, should she breastfeed her young daughter?
"Toxic Bodies explores why we have saturated the environment with so many chemicals that have the potential to change the action of hormones in our bodies," Langston says. "I start this project by asking, what happened? Why have we failed to regulate these chemicals, why have we failed to control their release into the environment, and why has so much harm come to so many?"
Perhaps, she initially thought, the lack of regulation was simply due to a lack of knowledge. But instead she found the opposite. Despite widespread scientific and anecdotal evidence that such chemicals cause cancer and a slate of reproductive problems, government regulatory agencies repeatedly approved the chemicals use and assured the public they were safe even into the 1970s.
For several substances, in fact, it was the commercial potential that was a surprise, not the estrogenic and carcinogenic potential, she says.
She devotes much of her discussion to diethylstilbestrol ( DES ), an early synthetic estrogen created in the 1930s and one of the first such chemicals to attract widespread attention. It was initially prescribed for relieving symptoms of menopause and later marketed to pregnant women to reduce premature births and miscarriages. DES was also widely used to fatten livestock, including poultry and beef cattle.
At one point, more than 90 percent of American cows were treated with DES, and the residues got into the meat. Pretty much everybody in America who could afford meat was exposed to the drug, Langston sayss.
The significance of its ubiquity was brought home to Langston halfway through writing the book, when she began having some health problems that raised concerns about possible uterine cancer and ultimately resulted in a hysterectomy.
"I started realizing that a book I thought was about other peoples experiences was also probably about my own family," she says.
Her doctors assured her that the things she was experiencing were normal, words intended to be comforting but which she found disturbing. A lot of women in my family had cancer or infertility issues, but again doctors said thats completely normal, Langston recalls. Eight out of 10 women in your family having reproductive problems or cancer... You start to wonder - should that be normal?
Given the body of information about these chemicals and their effects on animals, ecosystems and humans, she asks in Toxic Bodies, why has the government done so little to regulate them and protect the public and environment?
It's a story that reveals the often-conflicting demands of producers and consumers, unfounded assumptions about science and its power to assert control over nature, and the difficulty of striking a balance between precaution and progress.
DES, which ended up being a test case for government regulation, offers a bleak view. Three times the FDA tried to say no [to approving DES], and three times they ended up reversing their decision in a matter of months, Langston says.
Each time the regulators fell back on a standard litany of arguments still used today, including the absence of definitive proof of harm, debates about the relevance of animal studies, reliance on incorrect toxicity models and assumptions, and lack of suitable detection methods.
Though DES was banned for use in livestock in 1979, its story is still playing out in the bodies, children and grandchildren of those who were exposed to the chemical. And, Langston reminds us, DES is just the tip of the synthetic iceberg. For example, the plastic BPA is also estrogenic and shows similar effects to DES in laboratory tests.
Did we learn anything from the experience with DES? she asks. Were trying. What weve learned is that precaution is essential for protecting public health but its very hard to defend in court.
Shes encouraged that the FDA recently announced that it will revisit current standards for BPA in food packaging. The move comes after several companies have voluntarily reworked products to eliminate the chemical and retailers have pulled BPA-containing products from their shelves, often in response to consumer pressure.
Above all, she hopes that the lessons of DES will not be forgotten amid the continuing onslaught of hormone disruptors that fill our lives.
One of the things I found most striking about my own experiences is that theres nothing striking about it, she muses about her health. How did this become the new normal?"
- Jill Sakai, 608-262-9772, jasakai@wisc.edu
Source: Media Newswire http://www.webnewswire.com/node/512108
"Midway through, she realized the story she was telling was likely her own as well.
In Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, published March 2 by Yale University Press, Langston chronicles the history of synthetic hormone-disrupting chemicals, an industry that exploded after World War II. The result is a fascinating but horrifying account of how the vast majority of the American population became unwitting participants in a large and ultimately disastrous public health experiment.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals encompass a range of products including synthetic hormones, polychlorinated biphenyls ( PCBs ), pesticides such as DDT, and plastic compounds like bisphenol A ( BPA ) and are nearly ubiquitous in the developed world. Exposure to these and related compounds has been linked to a rash of health problems including birth defects, reproductive problems, and several cancers.
Though some of these chemicals, such as DDT and thalidomide, have since been banned in the U.S., many others still permeate our lives. And despite their checkered history, government regulation of such toxic chemicals has been spotty and often based on faulty assumptions, argues Langston, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor with joint appointments in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Langston was inspired to explore the topic by a graduate student who grew up near the Fox River in eastern Wisconsin, a waterway lined with paper mills and so contaminated with PCBs and other industrial chemicals that it is now a Superfund site. After decades of swimming in the water and eating local fish, the woman was facing a terrible dilemma: Now knowing that her body was essentially a toxic waste site, should she breastfeed her young daughter?
"Toxic Bodies explores why we have saturated the environment with so many chemicals that have the potential to change the action of hormones in our bodies," Langston says. "I start this project by asking, what happened? Why have we failed to regulate these chemicals, why have we failed to control their release into the environment, and why has so much harm come to so many?"
Perhaps, she initially thought, the lack of regulation was simply due to a lack of knowledge. But instead she found the opposite. Despite widespread scientific and anecdotal evidence that such chemicals cause cancer and a slate of reproductive problems, government regulatory agencies repeatedly approved the chemicals use and assured the public they were safe even into the 1970s.
For several substances, in fact, it was the commercial potential that was a surprise, not the estrogenic and carcinogenic potential, she says.
She devotes much of her discussion to diethylstilbestrol ( DES ), an early synthetic estrogen created in the 1930s and one of the first such chemicals to attract widespread attention. It was initially prescribed for relieving symptoms of menopause and later marketed to pregnant women to reduce premature births and miscarriages. DES was also widely used to fatten livestock, including poultry and beef cattle.
At one point, more than 90 percent of American cows were treated with DES, and the residues got into the meat. Pretty much everybody in America who could afford meat was exposed to the drug, Langston sayss.
The significance of its ubiquity was brought home to Langston halfway through writing the book, when she began having some health problems that raised concerns about possible uterine cancer and ultimately resulted in a hysterectomy.
"I started realizing that a book I thought was about other peoples experiences was also probably about my own family," she says.
Her doctors assured her that the things she was experiencing were normal, words intended to be comforting but which she found disturbing. A lot of women in my family had cancer or infertility issues, but again doctors said thats completely normal, Langston recalls. Eight out of 10 women in your family having reproductive problems or cancer... You start to wonder - should that be normal?
Given the body of information about these chemicals and their effects on animals, ecosystems and humans, she asks in Toxic Bodies, why has the government done so little to regulate them and protect the public and environment?
It's a story that reveals the often-conflicting demands of producers and consumers, unfounded assumptions about science and its power to assert control over nature, and the difficulty of striking a balance between precaution and progress.
DES, which ended up being a test case for government regulation, offers a bleak view. Three times the FDA tried to say no [to approving DES], and three times they ended up reversing their decision in a matter of months, Langston says.
Each time the regulators fell back on a standard litany of arguments still used today, including the absence of definitive proof of harm, debates about the relevance of animal studies, reliance on incorrect toxicity models and assumptions, and lack of suitable detection methods.
Though DES was banned for use in livestock in 1979, its story is still playing out in the bodies, children and grandchildren of those who were exposed to the chemical. And, Langston reminds us, DES is just the tip of the synthetic iceberg. For example, the plastic BPA is also estrogenic and shows similar effects to DES in laboratory tests.
Did we learn anything from the experience with DES? she asks. Were trying. What weve learned is that precaution is essential for protecting public health but its very hard to defend in court.
Shes encouraged that the FDA recently announced that it will revisit current standards for BPA in food packaging. The move comes after several companies have voluntarily reworked products to eliminate the chemical and retailers have pulled BPA-containing products from their shelves, often in response to consumer pressure.
Above all, she hopes that the lessons of DES will not be forgotten amid the continuing onslaught of hormone disruptors that fill our lives.
One of the things I found most striking about my own experiences is that theres nothing striking about it, she muses about her health. How did this become the new normal?"
- Jill Sakai, 608-262-9772, jasakai@wisc.edu
Source: Media Newswire http://www.webnewswire.com/node/512108
UA-7818383-1
