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The Toxic Assault on Our Children
Random House
August 2008
On Sale: August 12, 2008
368 pages
ISBN: 1400064309
EAN: 9781400064304
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In this shocking and sobering book, two fearless journalists directly and definitively link industrial toxins to the current rise in childhood disease and death. In the tradition of Silent Spring, Poisoned Profits is a landmark investigation, an eye-opening account of a country that prizes money over childrenβs health. With indisputable data, Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff reveal that the children of baby boomersβthe first to be raised in a truly βtoxifiedβ worldβhave higher rates of birth defects, asthma, cancer, autism, and other serious illnesses than previous generations. In piercing case histories, the authors identify the culprit as corporate pollution. Here are the stories of such places as Dickson, Tennessee, where babies were born with cleft lips and palates after landfill chemicals seeped into the water, and Port Neches, Texas, where so many graduates of a high school near synthetic rubber and chemical plants contracted cancer that the school was nicknamed βLeukemia High.β The danger to our children isnβt just in the outside world, though. The Shabecoffs provide evidence that our homes are now infested with everything from dangerous flame retardants in crib mattresses to harmful plastic softeners in teething rings to antibiotics and arsenic in chickenβadditives that are absorbed by growing and physically vulnerable kids as well as by pregnant women. Compounding the problem are chemical corporations that sabotage investigations and regulations, a government that refuses to police these companies, and corporate-hired scientists who keep pertinent secrets massaged with skewed data of their own. Poisoned Profits also demonstrates how people are fighting back, whether through grassroots parentsβ groups putting pressure on politicians, the rise of βecotheologyβ in the pulpits of formerly indifferent churches, or the new βgreen chemistryβ being practiced in labs to replace bad elements with good. The Shabecoffs also include helpful tips on reducing risks to children in how they eat and play, and in how parents clean and maintain their homes. Powerful, unflinching, and eminently readable, Poisoned Profits is a wake-up call that is bound to inspire talk and force change.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - August 19, 2008
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