Exposed

Yesterday Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air, did an interview with Mark Schapiro. Schapiro is the author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, and What's at Stake for American Power, which I reviewed when it first came out. The program was excellent, and Schapiro said a couple of things that stuck with me:

1.) Gross asked Schapiro how researching the book changed the consumer choices he makes. He said: What really gets me is, I like to have the information, and industry and the government have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent me, and you, and everybody else, from having the information about these kinds of substances, so that you can make a choice. I think at the very minimum, that is something people can demand. How has it changed how I do things? I smoke, I enjoy smoking, but I know what I am doing, I know the risks and I know what is involved with a cigarette. So the thing that gets me about this whole issue is, what you don't know. Get the information out there and people can make decisions about the risks they are willing to take, but right now the information isn't out there.

2.) At the end, Gross said, "Thanks for all the bad news." Schapiro came back with this: I don't see this book as a bad-news book. I have been following environmental topics for years and I have found these arguments over and over and over again. Environmentalists say, 'Take this stuff out, it's really dangerous' and industry comes back and says 'Get real. We have got to make trade offs in modern society, and we are going to end up throwing people out of work, and it is going to be too expensive, and it will be an economic catastrophe for our country, plus the stuff isn't dangerous anyway.' To be honest I got tired of that dynamic, it gets like Kabuki theater, the same arguments back and forth. Then I started following what was happening in Europe and I said, 'Hey, wait a minute. The world's major economy is requiring that things be done differently, and so what is the reaction?' I started looking at what is the effect in Europe, and the economic catastrophe that was predicted never happened. So it has been a bluff, over and over and over here in the United States as to what is-and-isn't possible. So I see it as the opposite of a bummer. I see it as kind of a new way of looking at things and a new way of looking at what is possible.

Yesterday morning, I had breakfast with a friend. He said something similar to me, about my blog being bad news. But like Schapiro, I don't see knowledge as bad news. I see it as empowerment. When we do know about all this scary stuff, we can weigh risks, we can make educated decisions, and we can demand change. As consumers, I truly believe that we have remarkable power! Vote for safer products every time you go to the store. Let corporations and government know you won't settle for less than full disclosure so you can make educated choices. They will listen.

(Listen to the Fresh Air interview here.)

Exposed by Mark Schapiro

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I changed servers for my website, and had technological challenges getting the blog migrated.

I just finished reading Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power by Mark Schapiro (Chelsea Green, September, 2007) and would recommend it to others. Schapiro not only looks at how chemicals are affecting our health, but also how the United States’ failure to maintain our world leadership in the environmental arena is now costing us economically as well. In particular, he looks at how the Eurpean Union’s environmental initiatives are changing the world stage and impacting the decision making at key US industries, including electronics, chemical production, and consumer products manufacturers.

Schapiro also looks at how our head-in-the-sand approach to environmental protection is now leaving us vulnerable to becoming the world’s dumping ground for seriously nasty chemicals that are outlawed in other countries. For example, he points to data that shows China "exports five hundred million dollars a year of processed wood to the United States that has been treated with formaldehyde, a binder in plywood and other home- and office-construction materials. Formaldehyde is a 'known carcinogen,' according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and a contributor to asthma in young children and respiratory problems in adults, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. In the spring of 2006 a timber company in Oregon, Columbia Forest Products, conducted tests on imported Chinese birch planks that it purchased at a Home Depot (such tests are not done by the U.S. government, thus our primary information on such matters comes from the private sector or NGOs [nongovernmental organizations, or nonprofits]). The company discovered levels of formaldehyde far in excess of the permissible levels in Europe or Japan."

He makes a pervasive argument that "US economic influence is quietly fading as its political and corporate leaders fall out of step with the forces of global integration that they once avidly pressed upon the world."

In spite of tougher regulations, the twelve-member Eurozone (the historic core of the EU) is outpacing us economically. The Eurozone 2.7% growth in 2006 compared to our own 2.2% growth. We need leaders who will help keep us safe, and by doing so, help protect our economic status and world leadership.