Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead Audiobook (Free)

They didn’t start out as environmental warriors. Clair Patterson was a geochemist focused on determining the age of the Earth. Herbert Needleman was a pediatrician treating inner-city children. However in the chemistry lab and the hospital ward, they fulfilled a common enemy: lead. It was literally everywhere-in gasoline and paint, obviously, but also in water pipes and food cans, toothpaste tubes and playthings, ceramics and cosmetic makeup products, jewelry and batteries. Though few people worried about it at that time, about Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a health care provider, and the Battle over Lead lead was also toxic.

In Toxic Truth, journalist Lydia Denworth tells the little-known tales of the two men who had been among the first to question the wisdom of filling the world with such a harmful metal. Denworth follows them from the glaciers and snow of Antarctica towards the schoolyards of Philadelphia and Boston as they uncovered the enormity from the problem and proven the irreparable damage lead was carrying out to children. In heated conferences and courtrooms, the halls of Congress with the Environmental Protection Agency, the scientist and doctor were forced to defend their careers and reputations when confronted with incredible sector opposition. It took courage, passion, and determination to prevail against entrenched corporate and business passions and politicized federal government bureaucracies. But Patterson, Needleman, and their allies do finally get the lead out – because it was removed from gasoline, color, and meals cans in the 1970s, the amount of lead in People in america’ bodies provides slipped 90 percent. Their success presents a lesson in the risks of putting financial priorities over open public health, and a reminder of just how science-and individuals-can change the world.

The fundamental questions raised by this battle-what constitutes disease, how exactly to measure scientific independence, and how exactly to quantify acceptable risk-echo atlanta divorce attorneys environmental issue of today: from your plastic used to create water bottles to greenhouse gas emissions. And the standard question-how much do we have to know about what we should put in our environment-is maybe even more relevant today than it offers ever been.