| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. By Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002. 408 pp. Illustrations. $34.95 hardcover; $19.95 paperback.

This book is an impressive historical expose of the lengths to which the lead paint, automobile, and petrochemical industries went to prevent their workers, the consumers of their products, and the public as a whole from learning about and taking action to protect themselves from the toxic chemicals in their products. It focuses on industry efforts to cover up the health risks associated with lead in paints and "anti-knock" gasoline and the vinyl chloride used in many plastics. These toxins found their way into the homes and lives of Americans through automobile exhaust, plumbing, house paint, toys, wine bottles, and even the aerosols used in hair spray and room deodorant. Markowitz and Rosner describe how corporations and industry organizations used their public relations skills, lobbying might, and ability to fund scientific research to conceal their products' hazardous impacts, to sow controversy when independent research documenting the risks to women and children as well as factory workers finally began to reach the popular press, and to thwart efforts to regulate their pollution emissions, get the lead and vinyl chloride out of their products, and stop them from constructing new factories in low-income, minority neighborhoods.

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