Provocative and groundbreaking, Slow Death by Rubber Duck reveals how the living of daily life creates a toxic soup inside each of us.
Studies have shown that significant levels of toxic substances can leach out of commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. How do these toxins make their way inside us and what impact do they have on our health? And more importantly, what can we do about them? Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, two of Canada's leading environmental activists, tackle these questions head on by experimenting upon themselves. Over a four-day period, our intrepid (and perhaps foolhardy) authors ingest and inhale a host of things that surround us all every day, all of which are suspected of being toxic and posing long term health risks to humans. By revealing the pollution load in their bodies before and after the experiment - and the results in most cases are downright frightening - they tell the inside story of seven common substances.
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Reviews
“Beware the smiling creature in your bathtub: it's yellow, it squeaks, your
kids love it, and it gets into your bloodstream-literally.”
High Country News
“Enviro-porn”
Forbes.com
“Undertaking a cheeky experiment in self-contamination, professional Canadian environmentalists Smith and Lourie expose themselves to hazardous everyday substances, then measure the consequences... Throughout, the duo weave scientific data and recent political history into an amusing but unnerving narrative, refusing to sugarcoat any of the data (though protection is possible, exposure is inevitable) while maintaining a welcome sense of humor.”
Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
“[Slow Death by Rubber Duck’s] real achievement is in documenting how chemical giants stay a step ahead of regulators, and those revelations make the book 'a fascinating and frightening read.'”
The Week
“[Slow Death by Rubber Duck] isn't just alarmist environmental shock and awe. It's a thoughtful look at how pollution has shifted over the years from something tangible and transparent (industrial pollutants as the cause of acid rain) to something abstract and nuanced (BPA's links to breast cancer). The challenges this change presents, as many of the world's top scientists explain in these pages, should be of serious concern to us all.”
O - The Oprah Magazine
“Slow Death by Rubber Duck is hard-hitting in a way that turns your stomach and yet also instills hope for a future in which consumers make safer, more informed choices and push their governments to impose tougher regulations on the chemicals all around us.”
Washington Post
“This is one scary book. Using a variety of test methods, the authors determined individual “body burdens,”
or the toxic chemical load we carry. The innocuous rubber duck, for example, offers a poison soup of
phthalates that “permeate the environment and humans.” From other products and food we also have a
collection of chemicals shorthanded as PFCs, PFOAs, PSOSs, and PCBs. None of them are good, and they
are everywhere, thanks to Teflon (which drew the largest administrative penalty against a company ever
obtained by the EPA), Stainmaster, nonflammable pajamas, tuna (hello, mercury), and, would you believe,
anti-bacterial products. The legacy of our chemically addicted society is not just all around us but also
inside us and it is killing us, as the Teflon case proved. (Workers in West Virginia believed that “having a
high-paying job often meant getting sick,” and many were reluctant to sue and possibly scare DuPont
away.) Poised between chirpy green-living manuals and dense academic papers, Smith and Lourie have
crafted a true guide for the thinking consumer. If readers don’t change their ways after reading this one,
then they never will.”
Colleen Mondor, The Booklist
“Fantastically important—an indispensable guide to surviving in an industrial age.”
Tim Flannery, author of Now or Never and The Weather Makers
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