Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power
By Mark Schapiro
Chelsea Green Publishing
224 pp $22.95

With the recent news about lead paint in toys, you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that computers, printers, and other electronic equipment can also harbor lead, not to mention other nasty things like the heavy metals cadmium and mercury. It's also not a surprise that some companies make good money testing electronics for hidden toxins.

But here's the twist: While products that fail these tests can't be sold in Europe, there is still a market for them in the United States. Beginning in spring 2008, China will start banning tainted electronics, too, meaning that people in Newark and Los Angeles could be buying computers considered too toxic to sell in Beijing.

Investigative reporter Mark Schapiro's new book, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power, has documented an incredible shift in the American government's approach to potentially toxic materials. In less than 10 years, the country that once spearheaded a worldwide ban on the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) has become an oasis for potentially harmful household goods. In Schapiro's words, America has become "a dumping ground for goods not wanted elsewhere in the world."

And it's not just heavy metals in computers, either. In the U.S., farmers can still use lindane, a potent pesticide that is forbidden in many countries, including Mexico. Schapiro notes the irony: Not long ago, American companies shipped millions of tons of banned pesticides to countries with much looser regulations, Mexico included.

In another example, certain plastic additives, known as phthalates (pronounced tha-lates), are found in everything from baby bottles to plastic toys, and have been banned in Europe (among other places) out of the fear that the compounds could disrupt the hormones and sexual development of boys. With the exception of pacifiers and teething rings, the U.S. does allow phthalates to be used in the production of all sorts of children's toys.

As Schapiro explains, Europeans don't have any special knowledge of phthalates, lindane, or any other potentially dangerous compound. There's just a different approach to risk. For example, if there's reason to believe that a compound could cause harm, European researchers will start looking for alternatives. In contrast, policymakers in the U.S. won't act until there's absolute proof that a compound has actually caused illness or taken lives.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 95 percent of all chemicals in consumer products have never been tested for toxicity. Following the now-familiar script, Europeans developed a plan -- Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) -- to scrutinize those chemicals. And although the U.S. spent years fighting REACH, the European Union ratified the plan in 2006.

Schapiro feels that America's stance against regulation and testing means that more of its citizens will be exposed to hazardous chemicals. As Schapiro writes, "In one industry after another, a new double standard is emerging: that between the protection offered Europe's citizens, and those afforded to Americans." As Exposed makes clear, the impacts of U.S. policy go beyond health. U.S. companies run the risk of becoming isolated from the international market place.

Schapiro has reported on the environment and international affairs for more than 20 years, which gives him the ideal background for writing this book. He's also the editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, an award-winning independent news agency that collaborates with PBS Frontline, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and hundreds of other news outlets.

While at CIR in 1980, Schapiro and then director David Weir wrote Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World. The book was an expose of the United States' double standard for dealing with hazardous chemicals: Americans shipped banned pesticides overseas, but the exports came back to haunt them as poisonous residues on imported crops. He and Weir also made a convincing case that increased pesticide sales were not improving nutrition in other countries, and were often actually hurting it.

Circle of Poison prompted an international outcry, which resulted in tighter laws for exporting toxic chemicals. Schapiro went on to serve as a foreign correspondent for The Nation and other publications in Europe, where he watched the European Union evolve into a powerful political force with a bigger economy and GNP than the United States. Now, 25 years after he wrote Circle of Poison, Schapiro muses about the irony of the new double standard: "Suddenly, I'm looking at this whole power dynamic and realizing, 'My god, the United States is now in the position that the developing world once was in relation to the United States.'" As such, Exposed stands to join Silent Spring and other environmental classics in warning of the dangers of hazardous chemistry in our everyday lives -- and making an eloquent plea for change.

For a book filled with acronyms and chemical names, Exposed

somehow manages to move along briskly. It helps that Schapiro has assembled a huge cast of quotable characters, including businessmen, scientists, and diplomats. There's also a memorable conversation with an Italian college student who was shocked to discover that her blood contained traces of 24 toxic chemicals, including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), DDT, and flame retardants, including the kind found on Teflon pans.

However, the uncertainty that plagues the field of toxicology also hangs over this book. Schapiro readily acknowledges that the actual health risks of phthalates in plastics, or even the presence of Teflon in the blood, are far from clear. In some cases -- most notably in a chapter about genetically modified foods -- he doesn't attempt to explain how suspicious substances could cause harm. He also cites information from some dubious sources, such as when he relies on a nonscientific, nonmedical organization for alarming statistics about breast cancer.

But the overarching message of Exposed still comes through loud and clear. Schapiro writes on the final page that "Americans are being put in a position that would have been unimaginable a decade ago: In some instances a dumping ground for goods not wanted elsewhere in the world; in other instances the accidental beneficiaries of protective standards created by another government over which they have no influence."

It's a decidedly uncomfortable -- and possibly unsafe -- position to be in.

-- Chris Woolston, MS, is a contributing editor to Consumer Health Interactive. A former staff writer for Hippocrates magazine, he has written for Health, Prevention, and other journals. He writes The Healthy Skeptic, a biweekly column in the Los Angeles Times. He is also the co-author of Generation Extra Large: Rescuing Our Children from the Epidemic of Obesity (Perseus paperback, 2006).

First published February 28, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Consumer Health Interactive

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