Reading Recommendation #1: Children and Environmental Toxins

Trying something new this week, and devoting a single, short post to a reading recommendation and some excerpts. Without further ado, I recommend:

You can find it at bookshop.org

Here are some excerpts that jumped out at me:

The claim is that GMO crops are safe and that they help feed the world. The reality is that GMO crops are designed to survive application of pesticides (mostly Monsanto’s, so now Bayer’s, glyphosate); many “weeds” are rapidly developing resistance to this poison (which both leads to reduced crop yields from conventionally-grown “Roundup Ready” crops and necessitates the application of still more glyphosate); and that far from being about food security, the widespread use of GMOs is about intellectual property in the form of patented seeds and, above all, corporate profits. Monsanto has worked hard – by hounding academics, funding fake research, and engaging in never-ending litigation – to hide what seems now an obvious truth: That glyphosate, which is used on much of our food supply, on many lawns, and in many public parks, is a powerful human carcinogen linked, in particular, to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
The 20th century explosion in environmental contamination by toxic synthetic chemicals is a far better explanation of skyrocketing autism rates than the discredited (that is, totally spurious and intellectually dishonest) MMR vaccine hypothesis.
See above.
Long live the EPA!
Just like the battle is not to recycle (which we all should), but to end the plastics industry, the call is not to run another 5K to “cure” cancer, but to end the production of countless toxic substances that, through human (largely corporate) action have become ubiquitous in Earth’s biosphere to our collective detriment.

Thanks to Philip and Mary Landrigan for their excellent, useful primer! And to my colleague Yom, who, I believe not only pointed me to this book but gave me my copy.

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