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Book Review
| Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South. By Pete Daniel. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press with the Smithsonian Museum of American History, 2005. xii + 209 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $26.95.
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| How does public policy get shaped when governmental agencies are captured by industry? How do we address critical social and environmental issues when the regulators are advocates for the regulated? How does science get used by those with special interests? These questions are at the heart of Pete Daniel's new book, Toxic Drift. |
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Daniel, incoming OAH President and also a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, has produced a tightly organized, beautifully researched examination of the interlocking goals and interests of the chemical industry and the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. In his book, Daniel details how this unit of the USDA addressed, indeed promoted, the widespread use of chlorinated hydrocarbons, organophosphates, and herbicides as a mainstay of our agricultural economy. In his close examination of the agency's relationship to pesticide manufacturers—whose synthetic products began to dominate American agricultural practices in the South following World War II—Daniel outlines a sordid tale. An agency that was charged with the responsibility to protect the nation's health and environment lost sight of its mission as it became an advocate for a new vision of a pest-free world. Through the use of a variety of reports, correspondence, and memos gathered from the National Archives, Daniel reveals the close interlocking relationships between chemical manufacturers, government toxicologists, regulators, and politicians all of whom joined hands to promote DDT, endrin, heptachlor, malathion, parathion, and 2,4-D, with little regard to the environmental or human health impact. Daniel describes how the ARS colluded with industry in its attempt to sell pesticides to the nation and to squelch concerns that were raised about the potential environmental and health problems that might accrue. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, "Chemical industry representatives roamed ARS hallways," Daniel reports, "consulting with staff about labels, residues, control projects, research, and other issues" (p.59). ARS continually argued that "pesticides were benign" and "used public relations to deal with the consequences" (p.59). |
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