About the Book
Take a random walk through your life and you’ll find it is awash in industrial, often toxic, chemicals. Sip water from a plastic bottle and ingest bisphenol A. Prepare dinner in a non-stick frying pan or wear a layer of Gore-Tex only to be exposed to perfluorinated compounds. Hang curtains, clip your baby into a car seat, watch television—all are manufactured with brominated flame-retardants. Cosmetic ingredients, industrial chemicals, pesticides, and other compounds enter our bodies and remain briefly or permanently. Far too many suspected toxic hazards are unleashed every day that affect the development and function of our brain, immune system, reproductive organs, or hormones. But no public health law requires product testing of most chemical compounds before they enter the market. If products are deemed dangerous, toxicants must be forcibly reduced or removed—but only after harm has been done. In this scientifically rigorous legal analysis, Carl Cranor argues that just as pharmaceuticals and pesticides cannot be sold without pre-market testing, other chemical products should be subject to the same safety measures. Cranor shows, in terrifying detail, what risks we run, and that it is entirely possible to design a less dangerous commercial world.
About the Author :
CranorCarl F.: Carl F. Cranor is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Member of the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Program at the University of California, Riverside.
Review :
Unnerving...Legally Poisoned is a frightening book. It reminds readers that lead poisons the nervous system and PCBs disrupt the reproductive system and that both have a long half-life, afflicting both humans and the environment decades after lead was banned from gasoline and PCB use was outlawed. The book cites a number of studies on laboratory animals that suggest a link between adult disease and early exposure to ubiquitous chemical substances, including perfluorinated compounds in Scotchgard and nonstick cookware, and bisphenol A, or BPA, a synthetic estrogen that hardens the plastic in water bottles, baby bottles and the liners of cans...Cranor believes a less-risky world is within reach...Legally Poisoned's...regulatory message comes through loud and clear. -- Melinda Burns Miller-McCune 20110701 In this compelling, well-referenced work, Cranor addresses a prominent public health concern: environmental chemicals and their suspected toxicities. He adroitly presents historical drug failures (e.g., thalidomide and diethylstilbestrol), along with the associated public fear and outrage. The book offers excellent advice regarding the future status of environmental and human effects of chemicals and drugs. It asks readers to stay informed and to participate in public debate and legislation in this area. -- J. G. Schnellmann Choice 20110901 [An] important new book...Legally Poisoned makes it ever so clear that Americans are at risk of being poisoned and the reason is the postmarket design of the laws that are supposed to protect us from harmful chemicals. The situation is unnecessary, morally repugnant, and economically inefficient. Hopefully this book will help to focus attention why the United States should follow the EU's lead in requiring premarket testing of chemicals. -- Sidney A. Shapiro American Journal of Industrial Medicine 20111123 Carl Cranor's new book, Legally Poisoned, provides an important argument for a new, pre-market approach to U.S. regulatory policy for industrial chemicals. While the book is dense in places, it is very clear, and it provides a much-needed synthesis of scientific, ethical, and legal perspectives that few scholars are capable of producing...Cranor has done us a great service by marshaling a host of evidence to show that our current post-market regulatory system for industrial chemicals is ethically bankrupt. He makes a convincing case for a new, pre-market system. However, unless we make aggressive efforts to find safe and appealing alternatives to toxic substances, industry will probably still find creative ways to dilute the effectiveness of a pre-market regulatory scheme. Therefore, one of the most valuable features of Cranor's pre-market system might be its potential to assist and stimulate creative efforts...to develop safe alternatives that will lessen the financial incentives to market unsafe products. And, even if Cranor's arguments do not gain political traction, the search for safer alternatives will still be an important strategy to pursue. -- Kevin C. Elliott Ethics, Policy, and Environment Cranor's volume explains how and why we all are legally poisoned--and what we can do about it. In a rigorous ethical, scientific, and legal analysis, he details these harms, argues against them, and explains how the legal and regulatory world could be designed to avoid them...Cranor's book is one of the best contemporary analyses of the ethical, legal, and regulatory harms posed by failed chemical-product testing...Cranor's book is destined to become a classic. It is a must-read for scholars in philosophy of law, philosophy of epidemiology, practical ethics, and ethics of public health. All policy makers in the legal and regulatory arena should be required to read it. More importantly, it is a must-read for every person who wonders why her family members are being destroyed prematurely by disease and death, even though they eat right, exercise, and see the best doctors...It is a masterpiece...This book, as it is, is about as close as one can get to perfect scholarship in this area of ethics, risk, and philosophy of science. It is one that every person, especially every parent, should read. Most of us have children, and all of us need to hear the powerful message about environmental harms to children that Cranor presents. After all, if recent research about "developmental programming" for environmentally-induced disease is right, adults often get a second chance. They frequently take medicines and get well after adult disease and dysfunction. Children, however, have only one chance to develop. -- Kristin Shrader-Frechette Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 20111207 [Legally Poisoned] raises critical questions regarding our society's moral and ethical values and our sense of personal responsibility. Growing public awareness and concerns about toxic chemicals have now brought these issues to the forefront of national attention, and we are likely to hear more about such controversies as science continues to advance. -- Valerie R. Aggerbeck Law Library Journal 20120601
